Caught in the Riptide
by Takada Saiko
Summary: Three years after Agnes is born, the Keens have settled into their own version of normal, but when they unexpectedly run across Gina Zanetakos during a joint Grey Matters/Task Force op, they're pulled into a war that shouldn't be theirs to fight. future-fic, Keen2
1. Part One

**Part One.**

The room was buzzing with activity. Men and women in tuxes and dresses moved and chattered and drank, oblivious to what was really happening around them. A deal was going down somewhere in the large room full of laughter and dancing, with a piece of intelligence that could cause a lot of trouble if it fell into the wrong hands. There were plenty of people there to make sure that didn't happen, but numbers didn't always matter in these cases. Skill did, and Tom trusted no one's skills above the woman that stood at the bar, watching those around her with a careful eye and dressed for her part of the op in a long black dress that dipped low in the back, daring him to be distracted from the job at hand.

He touched her arm as he circled around, letting her know he was there before he spoke quietly with her. "So how pissed was Reddington when he heard that you guys were using Halcyon to follow the lead?"

Liz looked up at him, a bit of mischief flashing through her blue gaze as she sipped from the martini in her hand. "He's never going to be a fan of the two of us working together. Red never learned to share well. "

Her husband smirked and brushed a stray wisp of hair out of her face as an excuse to lean close so they wouldn't draw too much attention with their conversations. "What did you find?"

Her gaze swept the crowd and she set her drink down on the bar. "Private security littered through the crowd, high-end targets all through here. The intel could be a person or a thing. Hard to tell. Have you guys gotten any intelligence on who was hired?"

"Not until I did a sweep. You see the young woman in the blue dress at your two o'clock?"

"The blonde? She's pretty, even if a little young for you," Liz teased and Tom offered her his arm.

"Not my type," he assured her with a wink. "I'm rather partial to brunettes. A very particular one."

He saw her roll her eyes playfully. "Well, if you need to go get information, I'm sure I can always get the gentleman at the bar to buy me another drink."

"See, this is what happens when we leave the wedding rings at home."

"You coming home to me?"

"Definitely," he answered without missing a beat.

She tightened her grip on his arm. "Then I trust you."

Tom felt his smile turn real as they made their way towards the dance floor. He felt her hesitate and he turned. "What?"

"I've seen you dance, Tom. Not exactly your most reliable skill."

"Ouch," he grumbled, feigning insult. "To be fair, I was nervous at our wedding."

"Is that your excuse?"

"And I'm sticking with it."

His wife shook her head as she finally followed him out on the dance floor. She knew the drill, and as they moved he saw her gaze discreetly watching their mark whenever she came into her line of sight.

"Okay, Tom Bond and your hidden dance skills," Liz said as they shifted seamlessly so they could start moving closer, "why are you so sure it's her?"

"Tom Bond? Have you just been holding that one back?"

"You had to know it'd come back up eventually."

He snorted and rolled his eyes a little. "She's St Regis."

"What makes you say that?"

"Everything. My guess is that she's on her graduate assignment. Probably specialising in undercover ops. She's nervous, but she hides it really well."

"Too well. Her expression is too controlled," Liz mused.

"Exactly. A lot rides on these assignments."

"What happens if you fail it?"

"When Bud ran the organisation, a failed graduate assignment meant a bullet to the head. Not sure now, but I'd guess probably the same."

"What was your assignment?"

Tom's gaze shifted back to her and he blinked hard. "I've told you about that, haven't I?"

"Pretty sure you haven't," she answered in that tone that told him he wasn't squirming out of the answer that easily. Or at all.

"Funny. Well, remind me later. We have a graduate assignment to throw a kink into."

He started to move away and towards the girl, but Liz snagged his coat sleeve. "Tom, we're not just going to let this girl take a bullet are we? She looks like a kid."

"She's probably younger than she looks with the makeup. I was sixteen when I started my exam."

" _Tom_."

"Breathe, babe. I'm not planning to sacrifice the kid. Have some faith, would you?" He flashed her a smile. "You have my back?"

"You know I do," she answered softly, still not sounding entirely convinced.

He squeezed her hand before slipping off and towards the girl in the blue dress. She was eighteen, maybe nineteen, even if she had done an excellent job of making herself look older. It was a talent many St Regis operatives used early on to broaden their options. It presented an illusion, nothing more. The experience wasn't actually there, and the experience was what would have helped her here.

There were protocols in place that had been there since Bud had started St Regis. They were drilled into Tom's mind like a second nature, and they would be into hers as well. Whoever had taken over the organization after the Major's death would have needed to keep many things as steady as possible until he - or she, if Tom's suspicions were right - had won the trust of the operatives.

"Business or pleasure?" he asked casualty, jerking her attention around to him.

There was a beat of hesitation before an easy smile fell across her lips. "Bit of both," she answered, looking him up and down. "And you?"

"This one's always on business," a voice said from behind him, and Tom felt what he was pretty sure was a muzzle of a gun press against the small of his back.

A smirk tilted his lips as he placed the voice. "Gina."

"Jacob," she greeted coldly. "What are you doing here?"

"Conducting business. I was sent for the intel. Since when do you accompany graduates personally? Bit below your pay grade, isn't it?"

"You're not the client," she hissed in his ear, "so what the hell are you here for?"

"Maybe not, but-" his gaze drifted around - "your clients were gone the second they knew you recruit was made. She's not ready, Gina. What the hell are you doing sending her out to the field?"

"Don't you dare question my judgement, Phelps. You're the one that left."

He let his gaze drift. Liz wouldn't take a shot into the crowd unless she knew he was in danger, and as of right now, he had things mostly under control. He just hoped that she let him handle his end. A sigh escaped him. "Put the gun away, Gina. You and I both know you're not going to shoot me in the middle of a crowded room with armed security. You've lost your client, but you need this op to succeed or you wouldn't be here. Let me guess, she's your first personal recruit since you took over and things aren't going well. You need to produce another me or another you to keep the organization loyal."

"What do you _want_ , Jacob?"

He glanced over to the girl who was desperately trying to hide her discomfort. "For us both to walk away happy. I _was_ sent here for the intel. My employer wants it, and she's willing to pay for it. You know me well enough to know I'm leaving with it, so you can either sell it to me or I can take it and make you look like an idiot in front of every asshole in the organization. Your call."

There was a beat of hesitation before the telltale sign he'd won. Gina growled lowly and the pressure on his back let up. "Not here."

"Wouldn't dream of it. Lead the way."

" _Tom? It's Aram_ ," a voice came buzzing quietly through his comm in his ear. " _Agent Keen fed me the intel about Zanetakos. We've run all her known aliases and there's a room in the hotel upstairs under one. 1528. She'll be there before you guys will, and if either of you give the signal, Ms Rowan is waiting as backup with a team_."

Tom schooled his expression as he fell into step behind Gina, the young would-be graduate watching him carefully. "Are you really Jacob Phelps?" she asked after a long moment.

"Sometimes," Tom answered with a shrug.

She glanced ahead to Gina who wasn't bothering with their conversation as they wound around towards the back hallway. "Are the rumours true?"

"Depends on which ones you're referring to."

She swallowed hard, her mask cracking briefly. "That you were supposed to take over St Regis, but you killed McCready and married a fed instead. That you left."

"I didn't kill McCready," Tom answered and reached out to grab Gina by the arm. "Stairs."

She glanced back at him. "Don't you trust me?"

"Last two times I trusted you I nearly died, so no. Not really. Stairs."

Gina flashed him a flirtatious smile and bent down, peeling her heels off. "It's a ways up."

"I think you'll manage." He glanced back and rolled his eyes at the kid staring at them. "Yeah, that rumour is true too. Move, Gina."

"How's the ball and chain? I hear you two have been all over the place. Are you really working for Halcyon Aegis now?"

"Shouldn't you be putting your limited resources into something else other than keeping tabs on me?"

She turned, several stairs above him so that she was looking down, and her dark eyes flashed angrily. "I have full control over St Regis. McCready left it to me."

"Doesn't mean they've accepted it. You've been at this over two years, right? Almost three? Not running it quite like Bud?"

"Do you want me to shoot you and leave your body for them to find in the stairwell?"

"Do you want to get paid?"

Gina bristled and the rest of the climb was made in silence. They reached the fifteenth floor without another word and she glared as he pulled the door open for her, flashing her his most charming smile. It might not have been the smartest move to push Gina when she was so obviously close to a breaking point, but it wouldn't shove her over the edge.

They filed into the room and his former partner reached for her gun at the sight of Liz sitting in the chair and waiting on them. Tom moved, but he wasn't able to immediately pull the gun away. Gina got one good blow to his jaw in before he wrenched the weapon free and the recruit was already putting hers on the ground. What on earth had possessed Gina to put the girl up for her final tests?

"You son of a bitch," Gina growled and Tom aimed the newly acquired gun at her.

"We have plenty of backup, so let's make this as easy as possible. I'm sure you can imagine why I don't trust you, Gina, but I'm not going to screw you. I just don't like the idea of you being able to pull a gun on me or my wife."

"You're her?" the recruit managed, gaze turning to Liz.

Tom snorted before his wife could answer. "Gina, any other weapons need to go on the bed. Now. You too, recruit."

Liz was circling the bed, but still keeping her distance so she could switch her aim as she needed to. Gina eyed her for a moment and turned a look on Tom that he didn't like. "Need to make you work for it, handsome," she all but purred and he rolled his eyes hard.

"Seriously, Gina?"

She just smirked as he shot Liz a look begging her not to hold this over him as he checked the woman he used to sleep with for hidden weapons, surprisingly finding none. "What the hell is going on?" he asked as he straightened, catching her eye.

A sarcastic remark must have been ready to roll off her tongue, but she glared instead. "What do you care?"

"This isn't the way to keep it afloat, you know. If you try to run it and tank it, they'll kill you. You have to know that."

"If you were so worried about that you shouldn't have left," she snapped.

And there it was. Tom pulled out his cell and handed it over to her. "Halcyon's willing to pay for the intel. I'm not taking it from you, Gina."

"And handing it over to the feds leaves us where exactly?"

"What happens to it once we have it is on us, not St Regis."

Gina motioned and the recruit and she pulled the necklace she'd been wearing from her neck and tossed it over to Tom who caught it. He shot Gina a warning look before he started working at the pendant, opening it to reveal a chip.

"Check the bag against the wall and you'll find a machine to check-"

"We've got it covered," Liz cut her off and held her hand up for Tom to toss it over.

He did and leveled his own gun at Gina. "Don't make me shoot you."

"Thought you said you'd forgiven that."

He shrugged. "I'm not stupid enough to forget it. Just hold still while we verify it." He watched Liz slip the chip into a reader that would send the information over to a room where Aram and Dumont could view it. His gaze drifted over to the recruit and back to Gina, weighing his thoughts carefully. "Are you in trouble?" She snorted and he glared. "Five seconds put it aside."

"What do you care?"

"Tom, we're good," Liz said, and he knew that look. She was trying to pull him back on task, and he kicked himself. Gina wasn't his concern anymore. This was business. If she ran St Regis into the ground, that was her problem, not his. He'd already gone out of his way to play nice because Scottie didn't want to actively make an enemy out of the organization.

Gina handed him his phone back. "Good doing business with you," she said stiffly and didn't even bother trying to make him believe it.

For just a moment he thought he saw traces of the girl he had met when they were teenagers in her eyes, and his mind pulled the mental image of a thirteen-year-old Gina covered in dirt and grime from the streets, underfed, alone, and angry at the world. He pushed it aside hard and he and Liz left the hotel room to finish the op.

* * *

The last thing Liz had expected was to run into her husband's ex on the case the night before. It had gone well enough after everything was said and done, but her jaw still ached a little with the force she'd kept her mouth closed when Gina had steered the situation to him frisking her. It wasn't Tom's fault, necessarily, but she hadn't missed the distraction or the quietness from his end that followed after they left, or the fact that he had avoided talking about it when they had gotten in that night. It had been late, they both had been tired, and Agnes hadn't even stirred on the way home from the Coopers' house where Charlene had been watching her that evening. They had both been out the door first thing the next morning as well, so it hadn't left any time to talk, but plenty of time to think.

It wasn't that she was a jealous person, or even that she didn't have quite a few more partners that she'd been emotionally intimate with than he had, but Gina rubbed her last nerve raw. Tom had told Liz time and again that she was the first person he had ever loved, but there was still a connection to Gina, and it left her in a foul mood.

"Momma, I wanna go to the park."

Liz blinked out of her thoughts, realizing that she had been staring at the file in her lap for an unaccounted for amount of time and hadn't even heard Agnes' approach. The toddler looked up at her with wide, blue eyes, and she found herself smiling. "But your daddy's making dinner and then it's bedtime. This weekend, okay?"

"With Uncle Red?"

"Maybe. We'll ask." She glanced over, a half wall blocking her view of the kitchen. "Weren't you helping your dad make dinner?"

Agnes shrugged her shoulders in a way that was all Tom and Liz uncurled herself from her seat. She reached her hand out and took her daughter's. "Let's go see."

"Okay." She stopped, a funny little expression crossing her face like she was trying to decide if she wanted to say something or not. When the decision was made she look up, tugging a little on Liz's hand as if she were trying to make sure she had her attention. "Daddy smiles more when you do."

She looked down at their little one who had said it so matter-of-factly that it nearly made Liz laugh. She knew that children had a tendency to watch the adults in their lives carefully, but their daughter was quicker to pick up subtle hints than many adults that Liz knew, and often voiced them with the bluntness of her age. This, though, left her with the smile that Agnes must have been going for. "I bet if you give him a big smile he'll smile for you."

That brightened the little girl up. "Okay!" Agnes let go of her hand to run back into the kitchen, calling for her daddy the whole way. Liz rounded the corner in time to see Tom scoop her up and she wrapped her tiny arms around his neck. "Love you," she told him as she squeezed.

"Love you too, baby girl. You want to put the napkins in the table?"

"Plates?"

"Let's start with napkins," he encouraged and set her down to start her task. He turned back to Liz who had been standing and watching the interaction. He offered her a strained smile. "Hey."

Liz reached out, his hand readily fitting in hers and she pulled him into a kiss, everything that neither of them knew quite how to put into words filtering into it. When they parted she glanced over. "Sauce."

"Right," he managed and turned back to the pasta where his sauce was nearly boiling over. "Lizzie, about last night…"

"Let's talk after Agnes goes down for bed?"

"Are you angry?" he asked hesitantly.

"We're okay," she promised with a smile and move to the cabinets to grab plates. "We should talk, though."

Dinner was always an adventure with an almost three year old that loved to make her parents smile. She was a hoot most of the time, but getting her to settle down and eat could be a chore. It was easy for Liz to lose herself in those moments with her family that had nothing to do with the dangers she and Tom faced every time that they went to work. The questions about Reddington, about Scottie, and everything that had come crashing down around them faded with their daughter's laughter filling the room, and it put her at ease.

Between dinner, cleaning up the kitchen, and bath time it was nearly two hours later before Liz flopped back on their bed, feeling more exhausted than she should. She heard Tom lock the front door behind him as he came in from taking Hudson on his last walk before bed and she cracked an eye open as he entered the room. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we're raising a precocious little girl."

Her husband snorted. "Agnes? Never."

She smiled and closed her eyes again. The bed dipped down next to her as he joined and scooted close, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. She just gets under my skin and…"

"She knows it. That's why she did what she did."

"Yeah… You were worried about her, weren't you?"

He hummed softly, not quite committing to it, and Liz turned so she could look at him. They laid there like that, across the bed horizontally, and watching each other for a long moment before he sighed. "I've known Gina for… a long time."

"You guys were fourteen, right?" she asked carefully.

He nodded. "She'd been through hell already and it was my job to find a way to bring her into St Regis. Most kids that came through the school, even if they wouldn't admit it, still wanted something to belong to, you know? We wouldn't have called it family, but something like that."

"It's a pretty base desire."

"Yeah, well not one Gina had," Tom chuckled. "Someone always wanted something from her and she wouldn't believe you if you told her you didn't, no matter how smooth."

"How'd you convince her?"

"I saved her life and then walked away. It was a gamble, and one Bud was ready to go at me over, but it paid off. She was waiting for us at the airstrip the next day. She and I… We've watched each other's backs since then."

Liz loosed a breath, watching her husband carefully. His gaze was distantly, like he was a million miles away. Carefully, she reached forward, her touch pulling him back. "It's not your fault, you know that right? She chose to stay."

"We were supposed to take over together when Bud died. She doesn't know how to run a school."

"Tom…"

"It's fine. It's not my problem."

She sighed, rolling and pushing herself up on her elbows. She leaned in, kissing him. "You're not responsible for her anymore, babe. You're not kids. You haven't been in a long time."

"I know."

"Easier said than accepted, I know," Liz acknowledged softly.

He swallowed hard and offered her a thin smile. "I love you."

"Love you too," she promised and kissed him again.

He pulled her in closer, his touch gentle even if a little desperate as his fingers tangled in her dark hair and she made a small sound of surprise as he rolled them over so she was flat on her back. Liz fell back against the bed, grinning at him. "Not so fast. You still have to tell me about your graduate assignment."

He groaned and she smiled, playfully kissing the tip of his nose before settling back for the serious conversation that was sure to follow. It never seemed to fail to make him nervous when she asked for a specific story from his past. He always told her, though, and trusted her to listen with the understanding that he had changed. That he was still changing and growing and figuring things out that people that had grown up in a more stable environment knew much younger. He was better than his past, and so was she. As she listened to his voice, soft and even, Liz reached out and took his hand, reminding him of that too.

* * *

TBC

Notes: I really didn't mean to start another story before I left on vacation. First I wasn't going to start writing one, then I just wasn't going to start posting it... you see how far I got with both of those. I'm three full chapters into this thing, it has a name, and so I'm posting the first chapter. I'll see what I can do about getting another chapter edited down for you guys while I'm gone, but I'll be hit and miss with internet connection for the next couple of weeks, so no promises. In other words, if you don't see another chapter in another week or two, don't stress. I haven't abandoned it. I know I'm usually much better about updates than that.

I'm getting to work with a lot of small theories in this story, which makes me absurdly excited. Hope you guys enjoy the ride! Maybe this one will take us up to the show?

Next time -

A visitor shows up at the Keens' apartment that drags them into a war that should no longer be theirs to fight.


	2. Part Two

**Part Two**

Liz was sure there had been a time when mornings hadn't been as rushed as they were now. Agnes was _not_ an early riser, preferring instead to dig down under the blankets and make whichever parent was getting her up that morning work for it. It was Liz's turn that morning, and of course Agnes would be extra stubborn on a morning that they had overslept the alarm.

"Come on, sweetie. You love going to Auntie Charlene's house."

"Don't wanna!" the toddler said firmly and burrowed deeper.

Liz swallowed a frustrated sound and heard a soft chuckle from behind her. She whipped around to see Tom leaning against the doorframe, only half dressed for work, and smirking at her. She lobbed a dangerous glare at him and stepped back, motioning to the bed. "If you can do better."

"Do you know how tempted I am to say we should both just call in and stay home all day making forts?"

Agnes peeked out at that. "Big ones?"

"Yep," he answered and Liz stifled a laugh of her own as her husband scooped their daughter out of the bed, her squeal piercing the room and immediately replaced with a giggle as he flipped her up onto his shoulders and looked up at her. "If you're good for Auntie Charlene, we'll build a fort as big as the living room tonight, okay?"

"Promise?"

"I promise."

A knock sounded at the front door and Liz glanced back, her smile remaining as Tom eased Agnes back down to the floor. "It's probably Red. He's been following a lead for a case on the back burner. He must have gotten back into town. Heaven forbid he wait until I get into the office..."

"Uncle Red?" Agnes asked curiously.

"Let your dad get you dressed first and then you can come say hi over breakfast, okay?"

"'Kay," she called after her as Liz started for the front door.

It was just like Red to drop by at all hours. Well, she supposed out of all the things that had changed in the years following Agnes' birth, that wasn't one of them. At least he knocked these days, instead of just letting himself in. A greeting slammed to a halt as Liz opened the door and found a man there that she didn't recognize. He was tall but slim, with hair so dark that it might have been black. He stared at her for a moment, confusion flittering behind his expression more than across, and Liz frowned a little. "Can I help you?"

That jolted him. "Yeah, sorry. I'm looking for, uh, Tom. Keen?"

"You're not Uncle Red," a small voice said at Liz's side and she reached down on instinct, taking Agnes' hand and easing her daughter behind her a little, not fooled by the disarming smile the man now wore.

"Well, that fills in a few gaps," he said, his dark green gaze flickering behind Liz. "You always did have a weird soft spot for kids. I guess even more for your own. She looks like you."

Liz risked a glance around to see Tom frozen in the little hallway that led to the front door. His expression was a mask of calm, but she saw the signs that few others would have, and she gave Agnes a gentle push back. "Go get ready."

"But-"

"Now." Her tone didn't leave room to argue and the toddler scooted as instructed.

Tom stepped forward as soon as she was out of earshot. "What are you doing here, Justin?"

"Good to see you too, Jake. I guess she knows? If not, oops." The grin he wore said that he was anything but sorry and Liz felt the tension between the two men. She wasn't armed, and the nearest weapon was in the lockbox in their room. "You going to introduce me to the missus? There are quite a few rumours circling about you, sweetheart. Makes me wonder how many are true."

"Enough," Tom growled, his voice low and more dangerous than Liz had heard it in a long time. "What do you want?"

"Cup of coffee'd be a good start. Seriously, Jake. Where are your manners?"

"I don't trust you," Tom answered, suddenly by Liz's side and close enough to this Justin guy to reach out of he felt the need to.

"Still a bastard before his first cup. Some things never change. I'm Justin Masterson. I grew up with your husband. He was Jacob Phelps when I knew him, but he's always been… flexible with names."

Liz kept her expression neutral. "I don't care. He asked you a question. What are you doing at our home?"

Justin Masterson's smile didn't fade. "I like her, Jake. I didn't think I would, but I do."

"Your point?"

The uninvited guest sighed. "This isn't a conversation for the hall. I'll even give you my gun. Will that make you feel better?"

Tom reached out and Masterson flipped his handgun around to hand it over, easing past Liz and into the apartment. "Nice place. A little simple, but definitely a step up from that place in that shithole that we stayed in on that op in San Antonio. Remember the one? Hell, I thought we were going to die in there, and that was _before_ the bomb went off. This is nice. Quaint. I hear you met with Gina."

Liz blinked, her still-sleepy mind taking a second to make the abrupt transition. Her husband tilted his head. "Business. She had intel the group I work for needed."

"Yeah, I heard about that. Halcyon Aegis. Don't they do defense contracting? Little bit under the table too? Well done. You always did manage to get it all."

"So what? You show up after years just to ask me why I met with Gina?"

"I know you haven't kept up. Hell, you've probably done your best to ignore the drama following McCready's death. If I were you I would. I mean, no reason to put more of a bullseye on yourself."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tom asked tightly.

"Well, plenty of people assumed you killed McCready. Either to get out or to take his place. It's safer for it to be the first with the way things are going. People might have just accepted you and Gina running things, but just her? She's killing it, and not in a good way. She's being challenged. Things are changing."

Liz shifted a little, wondering where this was going.

"I don't care. She can tank St Regis for all I care, or someone else can take Bud's spot. I'm out. My vote doesn't count anymore."

"You can say that all you want, but to a lot of people it does. Students looking to move into the field still know your name. The kids you helped push through the school are already in the field and are looking for leadership after McCready." He put his hands up in mock surrender. "I'm not asking you to come back, Jake. Stay here. Play house. I don't give a damn. I'll take your old jobs and the checks that come with it, but they'll be looking to you to back someone."

"I don't care."

"That doesn't matter. Make it easier on yourself. Choose a side, put your vote in, and get back to whatever it is you people do around here. That's all I came to say."

He reached out for his gun and Tom reluctantly gave it up. "Who's running against her?"

"The usual suspects."

"You included?"

Justin Masterson flashed a smile. "Thinking about it."

"I'm sure you are. Now get out."

He shrugged and turned, finally doing as he'd been asked, and it loosed a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding until then. "I'm calling Kate."

Tom nodded. "I'll call Charlene and let her know the change of plans." He reached out as Liz passed by, his touch gentle, but she could see the turmoil in his gaze. "I'm going to handle this, Lizzie. I promise."

" _We_ will," she assured him. "Promise me you won't try to do this alone."

His expression tightened before he pulled her hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. "I'm going to check with Scottie about something. As soon as I know something, so do you."

"Good. I'm going to do some digging on this guy. Send me what you know?"

Her husband nodded before moving towards the bedroom to make the call. Liz caught Agnes lingering at her door as she approached the room. "Hey you. Change of plans. You get to go see Kate today."

Agnes wrinkled her little nose. "I only go see Kate when you and Daddy are scared."

Liz tried for a smile. There it was again, that clever mind that worked out puzzles long before any child her age should be able to. If Kate Kaplan came to Agnes, everything was safe, but if she went to Kate, that meant her parents were nervous about something. "You know we'd never let anything happen to you, right, sweetie?"

Agnes nodded and reached out, letting her mother scoop her up and hold her close. Liz pulled her close and felt her arms wrap snugly around her neck as she hugged her daughter to her, a silent promise that she would never let anyone hurt her ever again.

* * *

The base was buzzing with action as Tom made his way through, his gaze set on the operations room where Scottie would likely still be. Rowan and Solomon had been running a high -stakes op out of Mumbai the night before and, if everything had gone to plan, should be wrapping things up about then, leaving Scottie still on site at least for a few minutes.

"Mr Keen?"

Tom turned, finding Scottie's personal assistant with a file in hand and tried not to groan. "Trey, listen, I need to chat with Scottie-"

"She's wrapping things up. I need your signature on a couple of things here. Sixty seconds. You can spare that."

The groan escaped and Tom took the pen offered, glancing over a statement in the file and seeing his own scrawled handwriting from a report he'd written up. That was one thing he didn't like about Halcyon over St Regis: the absurd paper trail. It was nothing next to what a federal agency would have required from him, but it was still too much in his book.

"And we need that write up on the joint op you and your wife were on," Trey pressed. "And sooner than three weeks from now?"

"It's adorable that Scottie sent you to bug me about this. Really it is. If the length of time I take on those stupid reports is a big enough deal, trust me, I'll hear it from her." The door ahead of them opened and the woman in questioned walked out. "Speaking of. Excuse me. Scottie? You have a sec?"

The acting head of Halcyon Aegis turned, looking exhausted and worn, but still sharp. "Tom," she greeted, "what can I do for you now that you're done harassing Trey?"

"To be fair, he was harassing me, and this is connected to the op a couple of nights ago."

"Walk with me," she offered and didn't wait for him to fall in line as she started down the hall and towards her personal office inside the base.

"It's about St Regis. I received intel this morning that there's unrest within the organization."

"That tends to happen when there's a major leadership change. Why should this matter to me?"

"Because St Regis has the potential to be a threat to anyone if they have the wrong person heading them up. The woman that took it over, Zanetakos-"

"Same woman you and Elizabeth ran into?"

"Yeah. She went through the program early, was groomed by McCready-"

"Obviously not well enough if she's losing control."

"That's the problem. McCready knew how to run the whole organization. He could teach and he could organize ops. Zanetakos is on the ops side, but she was supposed to have a partner to work with her on the student side of things. She's turning out her first operatives coming through from beginning to end with her. The girl with the intel was one of her first, and she was a walking disaster. The others will be too, because Gina's not a teacher. She doesn't know _how_ to instruct, but she can't focus just on the op side of things because then the students wouldn't come through. The organization needs a continuous flow from one into the other or it won't work. She's stretched too thin and it's catching up with her."

Scottie swept through the doors that automatically opened for her and moved into her office - one of many - and took a seat behind a glass desk. "You assured me when you came in with us that Zanetakos wouldn't be a threat. What do you know about her opposition?"

Tom's lips thinned out as he took a seat across from his boss. "Justin Masterson. He's from the same graduating class as Gina and I are."

"But wasn't on McCready's shortlist for successors?"

"No. Bud knew he was too unstable." Tom sat back, crossing an ankle over the opposite knee and studying the woman in front of him to watch for changes in her expression as he spoke. "Most students that go through St Regis are just trying to find their best route for survival. When you've been told your whole life you won't amount to anything and then find out you're _good_ at the work you're taught to do there… Most operatives enjoy it on that level. I loved my job before I had to choose between it and Liz. It makes me good at what I do." He watched Scottie carefully. "Then you have graduates like Masterson who were looking for a career that gave him the option to hurt people. He doesn't pull the trigger because he has to, he pulls it because he _wants_ to. Usually several times and makes sure it'll take the person a while to bleed out."

Dark eyes flickered up at him. "How likely do you think it is he'll get the top spot? Who was the other operative that McCready had set up?"

"Me, and that's obviously not happening."

She smirked. "Obviously. What exactly are you asking for, Tom?"

"Masterson showed up at my apartment this morning. With Liz and Agnes there. He was looking for support from me, which means he doesn't have it in the bag. He's persuasive, but so is Gina. She has the know-how on how to run the ops side, but she needs the support."

"I feel like you're about to ask me to buy out the organization," Scottie said slowly, and it was her turn to study him, and when she spoke her voice was icy. "You better have one hell of a pitch. I'm well aware how McCready picked up those children. I imagine Zanetakos goes about it in the same way."

Tom set his jaw. "Most of those kids would have ended up in juvie or dead. You and Liz share how much you hate the methods, but neither of you lived it." He closed his eyes for a moment, gathering his thoughts and coming back down from the defense of the organization he had grown up in. "Up until now, with Bud dead, St Regis has been a neutral player when it comes to us, and it would stay that way if we were guaranteed Gina would remain at the head. We're not. I've done a lot of thinking about it the last couple of days, and if we got Gina to agree to pull St Regis under Halcyon-"

"No," Scottie snapped.

"Just let me finish. We'd reorganize it. We'd make it into what Bud used to tell kids-"

"Tom, stop. I understand you have a connection with this group, but I'd imagine you've worked with me long enough to know that I have no interest in acquiring an organization that brainwashes _children_ to be operatives."

"No, but you have no problem using us once we're adults," he snapped.

Scottie's eyes flashed dangerously. "You're an adult and can make your own decisions. If you decided to leave today the only repercussion you'd receive was the lack of paycheck in your bank account. I don't put a gun to a young man's head that I raised to pull the trigger. That's the end of this. I don't want you interfering moving forward. You're too close to it emotionally."

"Scottie, even if you bury your head in the sand it's going to come to our door. It already has."

She quirked an eyebrow. "No, it's come to _your_ door. Are you suggesting that Halcyon cuts ties with you?"

Tom blinked and she smirked at him. "Drop it. We'll monitor it carefully and I'll reach out to consult with you if I need to on the matter. I'm not questioning your knowledge, just your judgement on it."

"The FBI is going to look into Masterson."

"Good. Lend your wife your inside knowledge if you absolutely have to be near it. Maybe they'll put a bullet in his head for us and do everyone a favour." She turned her attention back down to the file in front of her. "That's all."

He stood to leave, but her voice stopped him. "And Tom? Don't make Trey chase you down for the clerical work. That is _not_ what I pay him for."

* * *

"So this guy just showed up to your apartment this morning?"

Liz looked up from where she had been jotting a few notes to find her partner looking at her with a curious expression. It wasn't quite judging, but looked like it might turn that way at any point. It was amazing how protective Agnes' extended family was with her and how ready to jump into action that could make them. Even toe-the-line Ressler. "Yeah. He's connected to St Regis, the organization that trained Tom and Gina Zanetakos."

"I already hate it," Ressler grumbled and moved further into their office. "Is Reddington in the middle of it yet?"

"Not yet. He's out of town on business, but we had Mr Kalan watch Agnes today just as a precautionary measure. He'll know soon enough. That's one reason I'm trying to get everything together that I can. If he decides he wants to help, he'll be really helpful…"

"But he'll stonewall you if he doesn't," Ressler agreed.

"Exactly. Tom's on his way over to help put some of it together for Cooper."

"What are you thinking?"

"Realistically? First step would be to take this guy out of play if he's bad enough. Tom thinks he poses a bigger threat than Zanetakos."

"Of course he does."

Liz shot a glare his direction. "Long term, if at all possible, I want to take St Regis to the ground. I've wanted to since Tom told me about it." She paused and caught Ressler's gaze. "Did you know that McCready picked up kids off the streets and trained them to be operatives?"

"Reddington called it a finishing school a few years back when we were tracking down the Major to help in the harbor master case."

Liz sighed. "Tom swears it wasn't brainwashing, but that's what it is. He took kids that had nothing and turned them into killers. He tried to kill Tom twice for wanting to leave, even after raising him. He was the closest thing Tom had to a dad, and the moment he lost value he was ready to put him down like some sort of animal."

"The guy's dead, Liz," her partner said softly.

"Yeah, but the screwed up organization he started is still running."

"And balanced between bad and _really_ bad."

Ressler spun and moved enough that Liz saw her husband standing in the doorway. She cracked a grin. "Is that a visitor badge?"

He rolled his eye. "Who the hell is the new guy?"

"Roy. Don't piss him off. He'll shoot you," Ressler chuckled.

"With what? A taser?"

"Hey now. Those things hurt," Liz huffed. "So what's Scottie say?"

"I'm on loan to you guys for as long as you need me for my expertise on St Regis," her husband answered, rolling his eyes a little as he did.

"On loan? What, like a piece of equipment?" Ressler asked.

"Sometimes I wonder," he grumbled. "She shot down my idea though and said she'd prefer to let you guys put a bullet in Masterson and keep Halcyon out of the line of fire. I do get to help with that. That's a plus."

"Oh joy. You'll be hanging around here then?"

Tom grinned, slinging an arm around Ressler's shoulders and receiving an elbow to the ribs for his efforts. "C'mon, Ress. This is going to be fun."

"Don't call me that."

"Don't make me separate you two," Liz grumbled as she turned her focus back to the files. "Tom, come here. I need help filling in these blanks."

"What are you looking at?"

"I've found a little on him. Is Masterson his real name?"

"Yeah."

"Good. How many of these were St Regis ops?"

Tom leaned over her desk, looking at the files she had collected over the course of the morning. They were assassinations, mostly, with various aliases of his popping up as persons of interest. Once she had his real name it was fairly easy to tie at least preliminary information together.

"All of them," her husband said after a moment and Liz tried not to feel sick.

"How early was he recruited?"

Tom straightened, running a hand through his dark hair. "He took a little longer through the courses. He was quick with the practical stuff, but… Let's see, he's a year older than me, and he'd been in the program a couple years when I was recruited. He didn't graduate the academic side until he was nineteen, so fifteen, I guess?"

"I thought the recruits were supposed to have high IQs," Ressler said as he took a seat at his desk. "You just made it sound like four years was a lifetime."

Tom shrugged. "St Regis was - _is_ \- made up of several different levels. The first few months is sort of an assessment phase. Academics, social skills, athletic skills, combat… That sort of thing. I fast-tracked and wrapped up all of my preliminary training in two years. I did a lot of my specialized studies in the second half of my second year and had aced my graduate test by my seventeenth birthday."

"What did that entail?" Ressler asked and Liz groaned.

"He pleads the Fifth." She closed the file harder than she meant to and Tom at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed. He trusted her team, and while he would never admit that out loud, it showed in the way he openly offered information to them. Sometimes too much information. "I've got what I need to take it to Cooper." She stood and motioned for Tom to follow.

"Less like a piece of equipment and more like a search tool," he mused lightly as he did and Liz swatted at him.

"The faster we have Masterson behind bars, the better I'll feel," she told him and his playful expression sobered up and she saw the stress he was hiding under it.

"Me too."

* * *

"All I'm saying is that you should have given me a heads up!" Tom managed through gritted teeth, his knuckles nearly white as he gripped the steering wheel of the car. She had broadsided him with it. He had gone in assuming that Masterson was their goal and Liz had pitched dismantling St Regis to Cooper, all the while volunteering Tom's knowledge as an inside source. There were so many pieces that she didn't even know she was missing to this. If he'd known, if he'd had half an inkling of where she wanted to go with it, he could have warned her about that, but as it stood he'd just gaped at her like an idiot as she plotted out her plan to her boss.

His wife huffed. "Like you gave me when you went to Scottie and asked her to _acquire_ St Regis?"

"You wouldn't have been working with Halcyon to do what I asked for. That was entirely different."

"You realize if Scottie had taken your advice that you would have been working hand-in-hand with Gina Zanetakos, don't you? You know, the woman that you used to sleep with? Same woman that put a knife to my neck and shot you?"

Tom bristled a little. "I don't work closely with Solomon and we work for the same company. We'd have crossed paths here and there, but-"

"You would have been put _exactly_ were McCready wanted you," Liz snapped. "You would have gotten sucked into that twisted, manipulative, evil-"

"Hey now…"

"It is! You don't see it, but I do." She pulled in a shaky breath. "Pull over."

"What? Liz, we're almost-"

"Pull the damn car over, Tom."

He knew better than to argue with that tone. He put his blinker on, drifted over, and flipped the hazards on. When he looked over there were tears in Liz's eyes and he felt his chest clench dangerously. "Lizzie…"

"Stop," she said tightly. "I need us… Tom, I know I don't understand all of this. I know that it's deep and dark and _complicated_ , and that you may even feel some loyalty to St Regis. As much as I can, I get that, but that man that raised you tried to kill you _twice_. Once on our wedding day. That's the man that started this. That's the man the set it up, the one that is _still_ manipulating you, and if it's Gina in charge or this Masterson may matter on a level of how bad, but in the end they will both be using children and twisting out every ounce of light they can from them to turn them into monsters! This school doesn't deserve your defense. It deserves to be burned to the ground."

Tom forced himself to stay quiet a second, pulling in and releasing several long breaths, but the words cut at him. "Is that all it does?" he asked tightly and some of Liz's fury melted.

She seemed to understand what she had said and reached out to touch his face. "You're different."

"Am I? You didn't think so a few years ago."

"Tom, that's not fair…"

"You're right. It's not. I got a second chance and while I'll give you that most of the operatives wouldn't take it if it was offered, those kids deserve the option. You go in a have the government dismantle that school and what do you think happens to the students?"

His wife blinked at him. "We'll get them help, Tom. We're not just going to throw them to the wolves."

"You don't get it. Of course you don't. You had Sam. They didn't. They don't. Not _one_ of those kids had someone like Sam on their lives."

"You don't know that."

The frustration was almost unbearable and he had to remind himself that she didn't understand. Couldn't, quite possibly. "I do, babe. I lived it." He closed his eyes, his control wavering dangerously. "I'll help you guys, but we have to be careful. Promise me we'll be careful at how we approach this, and if I say there's no way in, no way to take it down without screwing them and sending them back to the crap they were trying to escape, that you'll trust me. We'll just take Masterson at that point and let the chips fall."

He watched her, terrified of the response and willing her to trust him on this. He didn't know how to explain it in the time they had before he'd have to get back on the road and go pick up Agnes, but he hoped that she knew him well enough by now to recognize how desperate he felt. How careful they needed to be.

Liz nodded slowly. "I should have told you."

"Me too. I got focused."

She smirked a little at him, her hand touching his and her thumb working in gentle circles over rough knuckles. "We both do. We always have."

Tom swallowed hard. "This was my entire life before you, Liz."

She leaned forward and kissed him. "Let's go get Agnes. Nothing's concrete on going after the school itself. Just Masterson. We'll see what we can do for the kids."

He nodded and turned back to the road. It was time to turn work off as best as he could. She wouldn't force him, and he hoped, even if he couldn't see it right then, that maybe there was a scenario in which everyone won.

* * *

TBC

Notes: Well, I'm traveling across the British countryside with wifi on the train, so I thought I'd post up a new chapter for everyone so you wouldn't have to wait until I got back to the States to read it. It's a longer one for you too, so hopefully it'll tied you over.

Next time - The Task Force follows a lead, Red makes a deal, and Tom finds himself in a dangerous situation.


	3. Part Three

**Part Three.**

"I need you to run a trace for me on this number," Tom said as he tossed the piece of paper down on Dumont's desk. The tech expert looked up and over his glasses at the operative and Tom flashed him a charming, but tired smile. "Please?"

"There you go," Dumont chuckled and reached for the offered set of numbers. "Who're we looking for?"

"That's what I need you to find. The funds are being transferred _from_ a man named Justin Masterson, but I need to know who he hired with them."

"This isn't on our books."

"Scottie told me to help Liz's task force out with catch up with Masterson. I'm helping out."

Dumont frowned and handed the numbers back over his shoulder. "Then have Mojtabai run it."

"Aram's running down another lead. C'mon, Dumont. This needs to be done fast or we'll lose the lead. Trust me, the feds getting this guy helps all of us out. If he gets what he's looking for he's going to make all our lives a living hell."

"What the hell did you do to piss him off?"

"Existed. Run the trace?"

"Fine."

"Thanks, man. I owe you."

"You bet you do. Rounds are on you next time."

"Fair."

"All the rounds."

"I don't think Scottie pays me enough."

Dumont snorted, his fingers flying over the keys and several windows popped up on his screen. "Okay, here we are. Transferred offshore here… and bingo. Hunter. Matthew Hunter. Here's his info. You know him?"

"Yeah," Tom murmured, and he wondered if his expression was as telling as Dumont seemed to think it was. He wouldn't have bet on Hunter turning against Gina. At least not for that sum. "She won't see it coming."

"Probably why he's the one doing it. Hit man?"

"Yeah. One of the organization's best. Forward this over to the Post Office?" He pulled his phone from his pocket and paused, glancing over at the technician. "All the rounds, Dumont. All the rounds." Tom dialed as he strode towards the door. "Liz? Hey. I need you guys to find Matthew Hunter. Masterson may have hired him to take Gina out."

" _Just kill her?_ "

"That's probably what it'll boil down to, but if he's going that route this early, that means he knows he doesn't have the support to kick her out without dirtying his hands up."

" _If they knew he was doing it, would it matter?_ "

"Not really. They'd care about Bud, but not Gina. She didn't start the whole damn thing."

" _I can't believe I'm working to save your ex-girlfriend's life,_ " Liz sighed from the other end. " _Aram's running the search to see if we can find this guy. Head on over here, and we'll go after him as soon as we find him._ "

* * *

They had tracked Hunter's whereabouts to an old collection of warehouses that hadn't been used in years. Red's people had been the ones to come through, but he didn't seem as pleased about it as Liz would have thought he would have been. He beat them to the location and turned as she stepped out of her SUV and into the cool, early spring air. "Elizabeth," he greeted. "I'm having my people do a preliminary sweep of the buildings. They'll let us know when it's cleared."

Liz glanced over as the black Dodge that Tom drove pulled up to join the FBI issued vehicles that she, Ressler, and Samar had arrived in. He stepped out and moved to talk to her partners. She turned back to Red. "Something's bothering you."

The Concierge of Crime offered her a disarming smile. "What makes you say that?"

"The manpower. Listen, if there's something you're not telling me, now's the time."

Red loosed a breath, his gaze flickering briefly to Tom as if he were making sure he wasn't within earshot. "Your husband does not belong on this case."

"He has more knowledge about St Regis than any of us could ever hope to-"

"He's too close to it, Elizabeth. Too emotionally invested. You and I both know that Tom Keen is not at his best when his work becomes emotional. He misses things. He makes rash decisions. He puts people - himself, you, and your team - in danger by doing so. He shouldn't be anywhere near this."

Liz pursed her lips together and glanced back, her immediate defense dying before it made it out. "He's just consulting on this," she said evenly.

"And how far do you intend to take it?"

"What do you mean?"

Red shifted, holding her gaze. "Justin Masterson needs to be taken out of the equation. He put a bullseye on himself the moment he stepped near to Agnes, but if you plan to go after his organization as well, I would advise you against it."

"Why?"

"There are too many moving parts. It's entrenched too deeply. Take Masterson out and let St Regis fall as it does. With Gina at its head, it won't last long anyway. If you and your team try to go in and take it down you'll never make it out alive."

Liz pushed a short breath out through her nose. "Add that to the short list of things you and Tom agree on."

"He doesn't want to see the organization that raised him fall. Don't trust him to be able to separate his emotions on this even if he wants to, Elizabeth, I'm begging you."

She didn't have a chance to respond as Baz crossed the space between the buildings and them. "You'll want to see this," he said and motioned.

Liz didn't give Red a chance to argue as she started off in the direction Baz had just come from. She pushed past Red's people and into the warehouse, her breath catching down in her chest when she saw what Baz had been referring to. There were three kids, two boys and a girl, standing there and glaring daggers.

"Put the guns down," Liz growled at Red's men and stepped forward. "Hi there. What are you guys doing in here?"

"Waiting on the lady," one of the boys answered and the other gave him hard shove.

"Shut up. Can't you tell she's a cop? We don't have to tell you anything!"

A chuckle from behind caught Liz's attention and she turned to find Tom with her team and Red. "Good eye. You're waiting on Gina, huh?"

"She's not coming, is she?" the girl asked, sounding like she was doing her best not to sound disappointed.

"Not now, no," Tom said gently.

"I'm not going back to the home," the second boy snapped. "You can't make me."

"You're not going back," Liz said firmly, the promise leaving her lips before she was able to think it through. It did seem to put at least a couple of the kids more at ease. "But we do need to talk to you three and get things sorted out. Would you be willing to come with us?"

"To jail?" the girl asked cautiously.

"No, just to talk. I promise."

"Lots of people promise things."

Tom shifted at her side and she saw an easy smile cross his face. "Liz wouldn't lie to you. None of these guys would. You can trust them."

"Why should we trust _you_?" one of the boys demanded.

"Because I've been exactly where you are now. I've had that choice on the table. Let me guess, she told you she could teach you to be anything." Tom tilted his head a little as the kids exchanged looks.

"Did you take it?" the little girl asked.

"I did, but it wasn't what I thought. Listen, Liz and her friends can only help you if you help them, but if I were you, I'd put my trust with them."

"They're cops."

"I'm not a fan of cops, personally, but I'll vouch for these guys. Even the Boy Scout over there."

The kids looked over to Ressler and they couldn't keep the grins from their faces. Finally, the girl nodded. "Okay," she said and stepped forward, the boys following her.

Samar and Ressler led them out as Reddington stepped closer. Liz offered Tom a smile. "You know how to talk to them."

"I was them," her husband answered with a shrug. "That, though, isn't how it's done. None of those kids match the profile. Maybe on the outside, but they'd wash out too quick. They'd never survive St Regis, and if they did, they wouldn't survive their first op."

"This," Liz said firmly, gaze darting to Red so he knew she was speaking to him as well, "is why I want to take the organization down. Kids like them don't have time for Gina to crash and burn. They need our help _now_."

Reddington's lips thinned out. "One thing at a time, Lizzie. Masterson first."

"They'll at least be able to help us clear up how Gina's going at everything," Tom offered.

"Yeah, but I'm still wondering how we followed an assassin and found those kids," Liz mused softly. "Something's off with it."

"We'll unravel it," her husband promised. "C'mon. I'll give you a ride to the Post Office."

She nodded, starting to follow him out. "Are you going to meet us there, Red?"

"Perhaps in a bit. There's a stop I need to make first."

She nodded, not liking that he'd cut it off there. There were bigger problems to focus on, though, and Tom was waiting at the door with keys in hand. The kids came first, then she would figure out what Red was up to.

* * *

"You need to pull Tom Keen from the St Regis operation."

Scottie Hargrave resisted the urge to sigh as she looked up from the paperwork she had been going over with her personal assistant to see Raymond Reddington standing at her office door. She knew she should have gone into the base this morning. People she didn't want to find her never bothered her there, and she had too much on her plate to deal with Reddington right now. "Thank you, Trey. Please let me know what you find," she said with a thin smile before turning, Trey scurrying out. "Red, what do you want?"

"Exactly what I said. I want Tom Keen off of this case."

"He's not on it officially, just on loan to Harold Cooper's task force for his expertise on the subject matter. The task force and Halcyon have an arrangement, you know that. We help each other out in situations like this. My operative has the expertise they need, and I wouldn't be doing my patriotic duty if I didn't loan him over," she said, knowing the smile and the words didn't fool him. They didn't need to. "If you have a problem with how the case is being conducted, speak to Cooper and leave me alone."

Reddington flashed that obnoxious smile of his and tilted his head, making Scottie work a great deal harder at not rolling her eyes. "You and I both know you don't lend operatives out if you don't want to. He's too close to this. He will not only get himself killed, but he will drag Elizabeth down with him on this path."

"You and I both know that even if I took him off of this assignment he'd go anyway. Elizabeth would too. She has too much of her mother in her to listen to warnings. Believe me, I've taken the best option that was presented to me."

That tugged a small reaction from him and Reddington sighed. "What is your interest in this, Scottie? I know you'd put more effort into sidelining him if it were just a power struggle. You'd send him off to the ends of the earth and let the FBI do your dirty work for you."

"Or is that you?"

"What are you after? Perhaps I can help you get it and this can all be over before too many people die that we would both much rather have alive."

She glared, closing the file in her hand hard. "I don't trust you, Red. Why do you think I'd tell you what I have planned?"

"Because your husband did trust me. He knew where my loyalties lie, and that's why. If it will keep Elizabeth Keen safe, I'm willing to do quite a bit."

Scottie turned the words over carefully. This was a delicate situation, but she was nearing the end of her ability to follow after her leads without a firm decision on bringing Tom Keen on on them. He was an excellent operative, and she was fond of him, but she wasn't sure she was willing to yet. There were too many questions at hand. She wasn't sure how he fit in to what she knew.

A sigh escaped her and she pulled a small note pad out. "In the name of protecting Elizabeth Keen?" she asked, jotting down a set of numbers.

"Always."

She nodded, handing the note to him. "Bill McCready kept a very secure set of notes about his organization that he called the Archive. Tom's mentioned it in passing before. It is a keep for every student that has passed through St Regis, every child that was on his radar to recruit, and every operative that made it out. As you can imagine, it's a goldmine. Your friends at the FBI can use that to take the organization down, if that's what their end goal is. The Keens won't drop this, especially Elizabeth. All you can do is provide her the option to take down St Regis without getting them all killed in the process. You'll win points with her, but all I want is that file."

Reddington looked over the numbers. "Who is it?"

She swallowed hard. "The only lead to my son that I have left."

"Scottie…"

"Don't you dare tell me that he's dead, Red. Howard did enough of that. _Does_ enough," she corrected, not missing the look he shot her. She ignored it. "You bring me that file and I will put the resources required into ending this fiasco quickly. I'll give Tom full Halcyon backing and the task force as well."

"We have a deal then," Reddington answered. "I'll reach out to my contacts and have it to you shortly."

* * *

Agnes pulled hard on her father's hand the moment that one of the seagulls landed on the dock that stretched out in front of them. He tightened his hold, even as she tried to slip away. "Bird!"

"I see it, baby girl, but you can't go running off." He scooped her up, holding her in his arms as she pouted. "He won't stay for you. You have to have the food for him. Your mom's bringing that."

"Momma needs to hurry. He'll go away."

"I bet he'll come back," Tom answered with a smile and kissed her cheek.

His daughter giggled loudly and hugged him. "Love you."

"Love you too, sweetheart. Your mom will be here in a little bit and you can feed the birds before we have dinner, okay? Guess who's coming with her."

"Kate!"

"Nope. You've got two more."

Her eyes lit up. "Uncle Red!"

"Not tonight. Last guess. Who do you think it is?"

Agnes scrunched her nose up as she thought. "Donnie?"

Tom grinned. "There you go."

The toddler squirmed suddenly and managed to drop to the ground on a barely controlled descent, slipping out of her father's grasp as he tried to reposition, and took off, calling for the bird that flew away almost instantly. Tom sighed, about to go after her when a voice stopped him. "You've had a busy day, Phelps."

Tom spun, going for his gun before he realized he had left it in the glove compartment of his car. Justin Masterson stood smirking at him and he glanced back to see Agnes had frozen where she was, somehow aware that this was no longer fun. "Daddy?"

"Your daddy and I need to have a talk, little one," Masterson said cheerfully. "Will you let me borrow him?"

Agnes turned a terrified look on her father and started towards him, but Tom held a hand out. "Stay right there, okay? Don't move from that spot."

She nodded and the tears in her eyes caused his chest to tighten. She stayed there, though, out of Masterson's immediate reach. Liz was on her way with Ressler and, if he could stall long enough, they would catch Masterson by surprise and this could all be over. Tom shoved the raging terror down as best as he could before turning a furious look on a man that had once been his colleague. "What the hell do you want?"

"You and your fed wife showed up in a place you shouldn't have been today. Didn't find what you thought you would, did you?"

Tom's jaw clenched. A set up. They were being jerked in all directions with this. "Listen, man, whatever is going on between you and Gina is between you and Gina. I don't want a part in it."

"I might have believed you a little more if you hadn't tracked my financials."

"As much as I don't want to be in the middle of it, I don't want to be blindsided either. I am _done_ with St Regis, on all levels. I have a family to protect, Justin."

Masterson smirked at him and let his gaze drift back to the little girl who hadn't moved an inch. "You sure do. What's your name, sweetheart?"

"Agnes," came the quiet reply and Tom wanted nothing more than to snap Masterson's neck, but a fight with him would be fairly evenly matched. Justin had always been good. If he fought him and lost, there'd be no one to protect his little girl. Scared was better than hurt. Or worse.

"What did your mommy and daddy teach you about lying, huh? Did they say not to?"

Agnes nodded very slowly, almost as if she were afraid it was the wrong answer.

"Well then, I bet you're a good little girl that doesn't lie. Your dad though, not so much. He's quite the liar. You know what happens to liars, Agnes?"

Tom's instincts kicked in just before Masterson took the first swing and got his arms up to deflect the blow. He was mostly set, only taking one step back from it, and ducked the next one. He popped up, to the side, and swung around. Masterson took the blow, almost like he chose to, and dropped to the ground to sweep a leg out. Tom's feet went out from under him, but no sooner had he hit the ground he was rolling back up, a well-placed kick to the other man's jaw hitting hard.

Agnes squealed where she was and Tom looked back. "Agnes, don't-"

The blow hit hard, his jaw aching from it as he stumbled, and the second punch knocked the wind out of him. Masterson took hold of the front of his jacket and shoved him hard against the railing of the pier. "Still can't swim, Phelps?" he asked, and Tom slammed his head forward, knocking him back, but Masterson leapt back and shoved hard.

Tom heard Agnes wail as he hit the railing hard, the momentum taking him over it and down to the waves below.

* * *

"I just wish there was more that we could do for those kids," Liz murmured as she stepped out of the car, grabbing for the bag full of bread that they had picked up for Agnes to feed the seagulls with.

"We will," Ressler promised. "They went home for the night and we'll… Liz?"

If he had continued on or immediately seen that she stopped, Liz couldn't have known. Everything zeroed in on a man on the pier and her terrified, sobbing daughter with no Tom in sight. Liz took off, dropping the bag.

The shot went off behind her and she saw Masterson stumble, but he didn't fall. Instead he started running. Liz cared less about where he went and more about Agnes. She didn't stop until she had the toddler in her arms, crushing her close.

"Daddy said don't move," she sobbed, the words barely understandable.

"Where's your daddy, sweetie?" Liz asked desperately.

Agnes sniffed hard and pointed to the railing.

Ressler was already leaning over to look. "He probably already swam to the shore."

"Tom can't swim," she managed, trying to keep her voice under control so that Agnes wouldn't panic more than she was already.

Her partner growled a low curse as he started stripping off his jacket and holster and vaulted over the railing down into the water without a second thought.

"Is Donnie going to save Daddy?" Agnes asked in a trembling voice.

"Yeah. Yeah he is." Liz leaned over carefully to grab Ressler's coat and holster from the dock, holding tightly to her daughter. "Let's go down below to be there when they come out, okay?"

"Daddy's going to be alright?"

Liz blinked hard and forced a smile as she kissed her daughter's cheek. "He's going to be just fine."

* * *

TBC

Notes: Well, I'm back stateside. Usually when I get back from a vacation I'm happy to be in my own bed. Somehow everything's just a bit dull after Scotland and I just want to go back. Time to start saving for another trip!

You can thank AKarenSilla for this update today. I was thinking about putting it up today or tomorrow and she asked for it today, so here we go. I'd love to hear your thoughts, because I'm rather fond of my cliffhangers :P

Next time - Liz and Ressler rush to save Tom and Gina Zanetakos asks for a favour.


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**

Liz took the steps as quickly as she dared with Agnes in her arms and rounded down onto the sandy shore. Her daughter clung hard, her arms wrapped around her neck and quiet whimpering still sounding every few steps. She was terrified in her own right and must have been able to feel the anxiety rolling off Liz.

The water lapped up on the shore, breaking around the beams of the pier and she stopped, gaze scanning it for any signs of Tom or Ressler. The tide was coming in, so that was something. It had to be something. They had been through too much for _this_ to be what did him in.

"Momma?" Agnes cried softly and pointed. "Donnie."

She saw her partner, soaked all the way through, trudging up onto the shore alone. His expression was tight, but he turned, looking down the shore, and motioned. Liz followed his line of sight and finally saw what he'd seen: a dark haired man sprawled out on the beach, the waves bringing him in and leaving him there. He wasn't moving.

"I've got her. You grab my coat?" Ressler asked and Liz turned to see him reaching out for Agnes, giving her the opportunity to get to Tom.

"Yeah," she managed, turning so he could pull it from where it was draped over her arm. She swallowed hard. "Honey, stay with Don, okay?"

"I wanna go with you," the toddler argued, but Liz set her down and Ressler had ahold of her hand before she could squirm away.

"Just a second, okay? You need to help him call the doctor."

"Is Daddy okay?"

"Of course he is. Just stay with Don, okay?" Liz waited until she nodded before looking up at her partner and mouthing _thank you_ before taking off towards Tom.

He wasn't far down the way, having washed up only a few meters away from where Agnes had shown that he went over the railing, but the fact that he wasn't moving terrified her. He was fine in water as long as his head didn't go under, but the handful of times that they'd made an effort at teaching him to swim he'd had an utter panic attack as soon as he went all the way under, and then all bets were off. It was a block, she'd finally conceded, likely brought on by some childhood trauma that he could only remember the barest pieces of. He'd tried to describe it to her once, after he'd coughed up half the pool water in the small pool that they'd given it another shot in. There was a hand, much bigger than him, and it had ahold of his shirt. He couldn't tell if it was pushing him under, pulling him up, or maybe even both, but all he remembered was the incapacitating fear and the taste of saltwater as it burned down his throat. She had been there every time to get him back above water and help settle him out, but now…. Now she didn't know.

Liz dropped down to the sand and pulled him over, leaning down so that she could listen for him breathing. There was nothing at first and she leaned down, pinching his nose and forcing air down into his lungs before pressing hard against his chest. She checked again, hearing nothing, and started over. "Don't you dare do this, Tom," she growled, hot tears blurring her vision. "Don't you dare leave me after everything we've gotten through." She leaned down and had barely started on the third round as she felt him tense. Liz pulled back just in time for him to sit straight up, sputtering and coughing and gagging against the saltwater. He rocked forward onto his knees, his lungs forcing the water out and he looked miserable. Miserable, but alive.

"Easy," Liz said quietly, her hand against his back as he continued to sputter. "Take your time."

"Agnes," he managed, their daughter's name half choked out.

"She's okay. Ressler has her."

"Masterson came out of… out of nowhere. Today was a test. He was going to…" He looked up, his expression mirroring what Liz was sure her own had been just moment before. "Did you get him?"

"Ressler didn't have a good shot and I couldn't get to my gun fast enough, but he clipped him. He didn't hurt Agnes." She risked a look back to see her partner with the phone pressed to his ear with one hand, the other holding onto a struggling little girl as tightly as he could without hurting her. Liz motioned that he was okay to let her go, and as soon as he did Agnes came stumbling and running over the sand towards them, screaming for her daddy the whole way.

"Hey, kiddo," Tom managed as she flung her arms around his neck where he was still sent half bent over his knees in the sand.

"I stayed there," she cried. "I stayed there."

"I know you did. You did good, baby girl," he promised, wrapping a strong arm around her and pulling her close.

"Ambulance is on its way," Ressler announced as he came closer. He'd left his coat somewhere behind, his phone and his holstered firearm the only things taken from it. "You okay, Keen?"

"Peachy," Tom coughed with a lopsided smirk. "You go for a swim, Ressler? You're all wet."

"Yeah, dove in after you to save your ass," he popped back and cringed when Agnes looked up at him. "What kind of ex-spy can't swim, huh?"

"Don't start."

"You know I'm not going to drop that."

"Some other time," Liz cut in. "Babe, are you good to stand or should one of us go up to get the paramedics when they get here?"

"I'm not going to the hospital," her husband said stubbornly. "I'm fine."

"You weren't breathing," she pointed out. "They're at least going to check you over."

He opened his mouth to argue, but she shot him a glare that stopped it. He knew better. Instead he just pulled Agnes closer and pressed a kiss to her dark hair. "You okay, kiddo?"

"Uhhuh. I don't like your friend."

"He's not my friend, sweetie. He's a really bad guy, but I promise you that your mom and I are going to protect you from him, okay? Just like today."

"Donnie too?"

"Looks like it."

It took a moment, but their little girl finally nodded. "Okay."

Liz felt a small smile tug her lips and she leaned over, pressing a kiss to Tom's scruffy cheek. "Don't ever do that again," she whispered.

"Do my best," he answered roughly and she could see the haunted look still lingering in his eyes. There would be nightmares tonight. There would be nightmares for a week or more.

"Down here!"

Liz looked back to see her partner motioning to the paramedics that were looking for them and she wrapped an arm around Tom, feeling him shiver from the cold water. "Just let them do their job," she said firmly and reached out for Agnes. "Let's let the doctors do what they need to do."

* * *

It was always a hassle when an ambulance had to be called. They poked and they prodded, and they always wanted him to go to the hospital afterwards. He was fine, he assured them, and finally they had relented. Feeding the seagulls were a lost cause, not that Agnes was thinking about them anymore, and they ended up grabbing takeout rather than the dinner down by the docks that they had had planned. By the time they got home, Agnes was sound to sleep in Liz's arms and Tom felt like he'd been run over by a sizable bus.

The shower helped, and Liz was sitting on their bed, dressed in her pajamas when he came out. She stood, crossed the room without a word, and wrapped her arms around his neck. Tom hugged her back, holding her close and pulling in a long breath. "I'm okay. We're okay," he murmured, pressing a kiss to the side of her head.

"I love you."

"I love you too. I'm sorry."

His wife gave a short laugh, her forehead pressed against his chest and her arms still around his neck. "Yeah, you know, because you meant to have a nutcase that wants to challenge your old partner for control over an organization you clearly left behind to come knocking at our door." She looked up, her tone trying to hide the stress that he heard in it. "Anyway, you did warn me it might not be done with you. I knew what we were getting into when I was willing to marry you again."

Tom chuckled softly and tightened his hold. "I should probably sleep on the couch tonight"

"No."

"I'll be up and down. I don't want to keep you up."

"I don't care. You've been there for me after a few nightmares over the years."

A smile perked his lips, real and small. "Guess so," he answered reluctantly. He glanced around the room, finding the spot where their dog usually slept by the bed empty. "Where's Huds?"

"In with Agnes. She was pretty worked up when she woke up. I got her back down and and he ended up curling up at the foot of her bed."

"Good boy," Tom murmured and released her long enough to take a seat on the bed. She followed and he didn't argue for a moment when she scooted up to hold onto him under the covers. He hated that she was worried, hated that he'd terrified her like he had, but there was something to be said about having someone that loved him enough to care. She joked that that he was the romantic one in their relationship, but in moments like these, especially once she'd learned more about his past and had put together _why_ he needed certain reassurances, he'd seen her slowly shift to try to support him in that way. It was just another way the truth between them had helped to strengthen their relationship.

Liz wrapped an arm around his middle, her head against the crook of his shoulder, and he felt himself relax just a little. "You need to talk about it?" she asked, almost hesitantly.

"Nothing really to talk about," he murmured. "Probably better to try to sleep."

He felt her nod against him and settle in closer. When he drifted off, he wasn't sure, but there was a definite shift between the safeness that came with Liz right there with him and the dream he found himself in. He just needed to remember that it was a dream. If he could keep that in focus, it wouldn't be so bad. It would allow him to watch it with a disconnect. He'd managed to do it before, and pull out of them somehow before they got too bad, but he could feel reality blurring into the dream dangerously, the lines hazing over until he was certain that he was standing on a beach that was somehow familiar.

Everything was too real, from the breeze to the smell, to the sand beneath his shoes. He squinted a little, feeling the wind kick some sand up towards his face and he pursed his lips together to keep from swallowing it. He was waiting for someone, but he couldn't quite remember who. It was like he knew that he should be there, but he couldn't quite place how he'd gotten there or who he was waiting for. He knew the beach though. It was like he'd been there before, but he didn't remember when.

"Got a call from Abernathy," a voice said from behind and Tom turned, finding Bill McCready approaching, his hands shoved in his jacket pockets as he moved to stand next to his favourite operative. "We're a go. You'll have a short window to get in, get what we need, and get out."

"I take it no backup?" Tom asked with a smirk, not knowing exactly how he knew that, but he did.

"You won't need it."

"Fair enough. Who's the mark?"

Bud turned, his eyes just a little younger than they had been when Tom had last seen him, his hair a little less white. In fact, now that he looked at him, he looked quite a bit younger than he had, and even younger than when he'd he'd first met him. "You are," he said simply, and Tom felt a strange surge of fear pass through him. McCready frowned. "Fighting me only makes it worse," he warned.

Tom opened his mouth to ask the man who had raised him what he meant, but as soon as he did he was swallowing water. He could feel it burning all the way down his throat, into his lungs. Fear caused him to struggle, but Bud's grip was too tight on him. He had hold of his shirt and was shoving him under the water. How he'd got him into it and why, he wasn't sure. Nothing made sense, and an overwhelming wish to just _go home_ moved through him, screaming through his mind so that it was the loudest thought in the swirl of thoughts.

He was jerked upward, coming up above the water and choking on the air. "Stop fighting me, kid," he repeated. "You're not going to win."

Blue eyes opened wide and Tom found himself surrounded by shadows. He struggled to pull air down his throat and into his lungs, sitting up and he felt Liz shift in the bed next to him. "Babe, you okay?"

"Nightmare," he managed, leaning against bent knees and focusing on calming himself so that he wouldn't hyperventilate. He had known it was coming, but it didn't make it any easier.

A hesitant hand touched his back and he jerked around, finding Liz sitting up as well, concern etched into her features. She rubbed his back carefully and they sat in the dark for a moment, his wife letting him gather himself and Tom just trying to. After a long moment her hand rested on his shoulder and he reached up to hold it. "Thanks."

"Anytime," she murmured softly and pressed a kiss to his arm. "Was it the drowning?"

"It was a little different this time," he said softly. "Bud was there. I think it was just a mix of everything that's going on."

"I'm sorry."

"Not your fault."

"Yeah, but I've been pushing on the St Regis thing."

A sigh escaped him. "I get why you do. It's sweet."

She snorted a half laugh. "That's one way to put it. I just… No kid should have to live through what you did."

"There'll always be people using other people, Lizzie, and some of those people don't care if they're kids or adults."

"Maybe there'll be a few less though."

Tom found himself smiling despite it. It was amazing what a good heart she had, even after everything. She had a better heart than he could ever hope to have. He turned, leaning in to kiss her. "I love you."

"You too," she answered and pulled him back down against the pillows. He settled in, revelling in the closeness. All he had to do was focus on that. If he could, maybe he could sleep at least a little while longer that night.

* * *

She wondered if Tom was as tired as she felt, because she was pretty sure that neither of them really got a lot of sleep the night before. They had finally drifted off about the time their alarm went off, and Agnes had pitched a fit when it was time to get her up. They'd barely gotten her ready between the way she went from clinging to her daddy to clinging to Liz, and she'd wailed when they tried to drop her off with Kate Kaplan. She loved Kate, but all she wanted to do was be with her parents right then, and it killed Liz to have to leave her behind. She'd promised to call during the day, and that they'd come by and get her as soon as they could after they finished work that day. As clever as their daughter was, she was still a toddler. Sometimes it was more apparent than others.

It didn't help that Red had been dancing around answers to her questions, either. She knew he was working his own angle, but he refused to give her a straight answer about what that angle was. Something with Scottie, Liz wagered, as suddenly Halcyon was fully supporting the task force's operation, rather than just lending Tom to them. She didn't know what he'd said to Scottie, or what he'd offered, but they now had three major players working against Justin Masterson. If everything went well, that would mean that they could wrap this up and either bring him in or take him down. The closer she got to it, the more she thought that it would be safer for her family to make sure that he was six feet under.

Liz was bent over a few notes when she heard Tom's phone ring and glanced up, seeing him frown as he checked the caller ID. "Yeah," he answered and stepped to the side of the bullpen where they had all been working through the issues at hand. She watched him, not quite able to make out the conversation he was having, but she didn't like the expression on his face. It was subtle, but she saw the irritation there, and he began to pace as he talked. He moved back and forth, his hands coming up as he spoke in an animated fashion, all pretense of calm washing away.

"He wouldn't talk to Ms Hargrave like that, would he?"

Liz looked over to find Aram watching her husband with her. "Not usually. My money's on Zanetakos."

"Gina Zanetakos has Tom's number?"

"Or a way to get it," she grumbled.

"No, what you _want_ is for me to help you get an upperhand on Justin," Tom snapped and stopped where he was, blinking hard. "He would have changed that. The second I walked, he would have changed that."

He didn't move and Liz swallowed hard, realizing only after she had taken the first step closer to him that she had stood and was moving. Tom wasn't looking at her though. He was entirely fixated on the conversation.

"Are you sure?" He squeezed his eyes hard and his voice dropped, frustrated. "No, I _know_ that, Gina. I'm not stupid. I'm trying to protect my family. He came to my home. He attacked me in front of my little girl. If it were just me…. Yeah, remember last time you made that promise? I have the scars to show just how stupid I was to trust your word."

Liz closed her eyes briefly, making a decision as she moved forward and touched his arm. "Hold on," he told the woman on the other end and pressed the mute button, his tone softening. "What's up?"

"What does she want and what is she offering?"

"Liz, you know-"

"What does she want and what is she offering?" she repeated firmly and her husband sighed.

"There's this database that Bud kept. It has everything about the organization in it. He called it the Archives. When Bud set it up where Gina and I were going to run St Regis together when he died, he fixed it so that it needed either his handprint or both of ours to open it."

"Why both of yours? Wanted to make sure one of you didn't shoot the other to take over?" Liz snorted, but Tom shrugged.

"Gina," he reminded her and she grimaced. "But yeah, basically. It was just a safety precaution in case there was some sort of falling out or something. Anyway, I figured as soon as I went to the feds when they were trying to put you on trial that he'd taken my access away, but Gina says he didn't. I guess he had other things to do."

"So she needs your help to access it?"

"It would give her a huge leg up against Justin. If we could take him out and she could get St Regis running-"

"What is she offering you in return."

"We hadn't gotten to that part yet. I was busy telling her where she could shove her promises that it wouldn't come back on me and she was busy trying to guilt me into it."

Liz looked up at him, seeing the tension pulling at him. He did well under pressure, but Red had been right. He was emotionally involved in this, and she knew what it came down to. It wasn't loyalty to the organization itself like the Concierge of Crime thought it was or even Gina Zanetakos, it was the kids that had what he saw as two choices as he saw it: to live as he had before he'd taken McCready's offer and hope to survive it or to join up with St Regis. He didn't see a better option for them, but there had to be. Liz knew there had to be. Tom had hoped there was when he had gone to Scottie and asked her to turn it into what he had thought he was joining up with at fourteen. Maybe something even better. She swallowed hard and reached up, her finger trailing across his cheek. "Do it."

"Lizzie…"

"You said it yourself we can't help these kids, and if we take it down they'll just go back into the system. Taking down Masterson has to be enough for now."

"Are you sure?"

She forced herself to nod. Tom grew up in this life. He knew the risks better than even she did. She trusted him. She had to choose to trust him here, even if it was difficult.

Tom set his jaw and she could see the wheels turning. After half a beat he nodded and unmuted the phone. Liz could hear Gina cursing at him from the other end. "Breathe," he snapped. "You want this, you have to give me something in return. I need Bud's file on Justin. Everything. And... I'm going to make sure you get your spot, but you need to make sure that it doesn't come back on my family. I need a guarantee from you. More than trying, doing it."

Liz looked over when she heard him sigh, ending the call. "I need to go meet with Gina."

"Now?"

"Yeah. This needs to be ended now. Just keep at Justin and I'll handle the Gina end of things. People are going to be less likely to put their backing with him if they know she has access to Bud's archives."

Liz nodded. "Just be careful?"

Her husband offered her a tight smile and leaned in, pressing a kiss against her forehead. "I will. Love you."

"Love you too."

* * *

TBC

Notes: See? I didn't kill him. I wouldn't do that :)

I would love to know if anyone has any theories about where this is going, with what Red is pulling, what Tom is dreaming, and what Gina is asking for. Any thoughts?

Also, if you're on Tumblr, Keen2 Appreciation Week starts on Tuesday! Get ready for some awesome things :D

Next Time - Tom goes back to the place that he grew up to help Gina open Bud's Archives.


	5. Part Five

**Part Five**

Scottie had been strangely willing to sign off on Tom's last-minute request for the private jet to fly up to New York. He hadn't been sure exactly what to expect when he got there, but the fact that a car picked him up instead of Gina wasn't entirely surprising. It drove him a ways out of the city, giving him time to lean back, watch the scenery pass by, and think.

It seemed not matter how hard he tried to get away from the life he had led before Liz, it kept popping back up at the worst of time, putting both him and his family into a dangerous position. Liz's immediate response was to shut everything down, but she didn't understand what she was asking for. For all the trouble St Regis was in at that moment with Gina running it into the ground, it was still strong. It was stronger than she or any of her fellow teammates comes wrap their mind around, and if they attempted to take it to the ground it'd likely get everyone involved killed. The organization might be divided, but if an outside threat reared up against it, they'd unify against it. Even the FBI wouldn't stand a chance. Not like this.

The problem was that Liz was stubborn, even if she didn't entirely understand the situation. It left Tom trying to explain it to her, knowing how difficult it was for someone on the outside to understand the complexity - especially in the limited time she had to come to terms with it - and somehow try to mitigate the damage caused by everything. From what he understood, Red had tried to talk her out of attacking St Regis head on as well, so at least he wouldn't be fighting it on all fronts. As much as he hated it, helping Gina find a way to keep her position as the head of the school and the organization was the safest approach for all involved. The FBI would take down Masterson and Tom's family could be safe. Maybe, just maybe, his past might leave him alone then and Liz would be content to stop there. He hadn't missed that she was trying to be, only that he knew it might not last.

Bud had made the decision that he wanted duel successors years back. Thinking about it, Tom was sure it was after the Cape Town incident, in which he had saved his mentor's life, nearly at the cost of his own, and Gina had risked quite a bit to break her sometimes-partner out of the hellhole that their enemies had thrown him in to torture St Regis' secrets out of him. He hadn't said a word, but McCready wasn't a fool. He knew loyalty could only take a person so far. Jacob Phelps had proven himself to be damn loyal to the man that had raised him during that point in his life, but to trust everything to one man was a way to bring down the organization, so the man that was known through many circles as The Major had set up a duel access to the Archives for both Jacob and Gina. Tom had just assumed that when Bud had put the hit out on him that his access had been revoked. According to Gina, though, it still stood, and he had to admit that he was at least a little curious what was behind those massive doors that Bud had always promised to show him someday.

It looked like _someday_ was finally there.

The car pulled through a set of gates he hadn't been through in some years now and a chill swept through him where a strange - even if subtle - sense of homecoming used to be. Tom pulled in a quiet, but deep breath and set his gaze forward, waiting as they pulled through the layers of security and wound back around the gym, through the set of dorms, past the mess hall, and finally to the administrative building in which Bud's old office was housed. Gina's now, he supposed.

There wasn't a peep from the driver - there hadn't been since he'd pulled up at the private airport and told Tom that he was there on orders from "Ms. Zanetakos" - as he killed the engine, giving off the only signal that Tom guessed that he'd get that it was time to exit the vehicle. He swallowed hard, steeling himself, as he shoved his cell phone in his pocket, opened the door, and stepped out.

The grounds were beautiful. He'd forgotten just how impressive they were with the massive trees shading that particular corner and the precision in which the shrubs and grass were cut. Not a rock was kicked loose from the path, it seemed, and everything was clean and tidy. He didn't have to see that every bed in the dorms was made, every dish washed after a meal, and that uniforms were pressed as if the students were members of the military. Bud had earned his title well enough in the way that he ran St Regis, and it needed to be done. So many of the students that passed through came from little to no structure in their early lives, and what structure was forced on them later was rebelled against. Bud had always put them in line, and Tom was sure that Gina had followed at least what was visible to her in every way. It was Bud's secrets that she believed were causing the hang up in her success as the leader that their mentor had expected her to become. Well, that and the fact that she was only half of what was needed, but maybe the other half could be found in the Archives rather than in Tom himself. Tom certainly hoped so.

Students jogged by where he stood, cutting him off from his path to the front door of the offices the teachers and Gina kept, and he watched them as they did for a moment, feeling a strange sensation that he couldn't quite place wash over him. He closed his eyes, steadying himself, before moving up the steps and the door was opened for him so that he could walk through.

He'd thought she would take Bud's office. Gina wasn't the type to be bothered with the fact that she had been the one to put the bullet in their mentor and then take his place. What likely bothered her more was the fact that she had done it to protect a man that no longer aligned himself with her interests. To her, he owed her. To him, he was just trying to stay afloat in all of this. Masterson had made it clear that he wouldn't make it easy.

"Halcyon's private plane in," his former lover said as he walked through the doors in. "I thought your boss didn't want anything to do with this situation. She's made sure to make it clear she was distancing herself."

"She could have told me to take the intel off of you and not bother to pay you for the trouble. She isn't looking to make an enemy out of St Regis, just not get burned for a war that isn't hers," Tom answered with a shrug.

"And is it yours?" Gina asked, dark eyes flickering up to look at him.

"You and Justin sure as hell brought it to my doorstep," he grumbled, glancing around. Not much had changed. She was trying to keep the steady appearance of the school going, even if she was being dragged under by what she didn't know that she didn't know.

"We do what we have to to survive. You and I both know that. It's what you're doing right now."

He sighed, letting his shoulders drop a little. "Listen, I know you're going to do what you have to to keep it going, but-"

"Stop," she bit out. "I know your little FBI bitch has gotten into your head and convinced you to turn your back in everything that mattered to you, but you won't drag me down with you. You're not here to convince me to change the way we do things. The best you get out of this is that it stays the same and I leave your boss' organization alone. It's better than Masterson would give you." Gina stood, and he was surprised to see that she was dressed in a business suit. He'd seen her in dresses before, but they were always for ops and never on her own time. He supposed she wasn't on her own time anymore. "We're not children anymore, Jacob. You want to live out your fantasy that you've cooked up? Fine. I just hope you won't come crying to me when it crashes and burns around you. People like us don't get families, you know that."

"Rousing speech, Gina, thanks. Something that will always inspire someone to go out of their way to help you."

"St Regis will remain neutral with Halcyon. That's what you really want. That's what Susan Hargrave really wants. More important, that's the deal we made."

"It is."

"Take it then, and stop pestering me over the conscious you've grown. It's embarrassing."

Tom's lips thinned, but he gave her a curt nod. "Fine."

"Then we're good?"

He nodded again and she motioned for him to follow as she moved to the hidden padlock that would open a door in the wall, leading back to the locked Archive. "It took me a year and a half, nearly two, to crack McCready's code," she admitted as she punched the numbers in.

"You think about using the students to break it?"

"Of course I did, but these things have to be done quietly."

He shrugged a little, inclining his head in agreement. "Smell a little bit of blood, yeah."

She grimaced at the phrasing and for the first time Tom saw how tired she looked. Gina had never been one for long undercover ops. She was a go in, get the job done, and get out kind of woman. His personality was much more suited than hers to the patient work of deep cover assignments. This, though, had to have been like playing a role to keep up appearances. She needed the Archives and Bud's notes to be able to understand in full what made the school work. The organization she understood. Give her an assignment, a operation, and Gina Zanetakos was golden, but she didn't understand what Bud did about choosing the students. That much was apparent in her first hand-picked graduate. Tom might have been able to sniff out the profile a bit better if he'd stayed on, even if they hadn't gotten into the Archives, but this should allow her to do what he could have done naturally.

"Why didn't he change the codes?" Tom asked suddenly as they stepped through the door and into the back room with the readers against the wall. It would take William McCready's one hand print, or a dual key of Jacob Phelps and Gina Zanetako's handprints pressed up together to open the door. It had at one time, anyway.

"You were running and he had better things to do," Gina answered with a small shrug. "Honestly? I think a very small part of him didn't want to admit that you had gone. He commissioned several of us to track you down right after you left and told us to spare no expense, but as soon as we started, he put us on other assignments, telling us they were more important. You were in DC. I knew that much, so I'm sure the others did as well. McCready found excuses."

"Why?"

"Don't be stupid. You know he was fond of you."

"Bud wasn't fond of anyone," Tom grumbled.

"He didn't let anyone call him _Bud_ , either, but you got away with it." Her gaze flickered over and Tom felt her eyes on him. "Don't be bitter, Jacob. You're the one that left. You don't get to act like he hurt you in all of this. You brought every damn bit of pain on yourself."

"I'm sorry, did you want my help or something?" Tom snapped, feeling his defenses flare up into place. She was hurt. Bud had been hurt. Tom himself had been hurt. Nothing would ever be admitted out loud, and telling him that he was a disappointment would always be the closest Bud would have come to it, but now he was dead and rotting in some plastic wrap six feet under. Even now, though, Gina hedged the truth.

"You're an ass," she told him simply and motioned to the print reader.

They moved together, in unison, and pressed their palms against the reader. It hummed on either side of the door, the scanners moving and reading, and Tom briefly wondered if there would be some booby trap that Bud set up and simply didn't tell Gina about. It'd be just like him to be a spiteful bastard like that. Nothing exploded, though. Instead the door in the middle hissed and slid open, revealing the room inside.

Tom glanced at his former partner and found her staring at it, wide-eyed and distrusting. "C'mon," he coaxed.

"You can go now, if you want," she said softly. "I'll send you what I promised."

"I've come this far. I need to know."

Her expression steeled and she moved forward, her heels tapping against the hard floor beneath them. He followed in, taking everything in. They had spent their teenage - and fairly well into their adult - years theorizing what exactly Bill McCready kept behind that door. Tom had laughed one time and said it'd be typical if the old man croaked and left them with piles of written notes scattered and expected them to piece them together in some kind of logical format.

There were no piles of notes spread out in the room, though, but a fairly sophisticated computer system that ran along the wall. Gina moved to it, fixed now on her goal, and Tom watched as she pulled up files. The screen, which could have very easily been over eight feet tall and likely something around twelve feet in width, jumped to life as she hit the power button. Tom watched with a strange sort of fascination as it flickered to life with McCready's symbol that tied the school and organization together showing that it was booting up.

"What if this doesn't help?" Gina asked quietly, her voice strangely hesitant and Tom looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was scared. Failure at this point, unless she was willing to disassemble the school entirely, could mean death for her. It would also mean destroying the one thing in her life that had been constant. She'd already killed the man that had raised them, the one that she'd given more years to than she hadn't, but it was strange to see that weight visibly show in the way her shoulders pulled back tightly and the borderline nervous expression in her dark gaze.

Tom offered a thin smile. "There's a reason he wanted you to run it."

"You were supposed to be here," she answered immediately.

"This is all I can do for you, Gina," Tom murmured, his voice softer than it had been with her in years.

"Going to protect me one more time?" she chuckled mirthlessly.

"We did always have each other's backs."

She nodded and turned her gaze back to the screen as it popped on, showing a home screen. Tom watched as she moved forward, hand on the mouse that was there and she searched for the files. "Look at it all," she breathed.

Well, Bud always had been meticulous. There were countless files, tucked away in folders ranging from courses, procedures, every last damn contact that had come through St Regis, and lecturers past and present. There were files labeled for recruits Bud had been looking at bringing in, students that had been current when he died, and every member of St Regis that had graduated.

Gina pulled up one file, and Justin Masterson's face popped up on the screen. There were photos from his childhood, ranging back to his time in the foster system, notes from various shrinks and social workers, a criminal record from before Bud had gotten ahold of him, his records from St Regis, and a surprisingly detailed list of information on every operation that he'd been on through St Regis. Tom loosed a low and long whistle. "That's what they need."

"I can't believe I'm giving one of my operative's files to the feds," Gina growled as she removed a thumb drive from her pocket, inserted it, and hit the download button.

"An operative that's going to try to kill you, Gina. You want St Regis? Take it. Hold it. Let the feds do your dirty work."

"And Halcyon's?"

Tom shrugged. "Hargrave just wants peace between the organizations. I've made sure she knows you're the one that will give us that, not Justin."

A very small smile tugged at her lips and she moved through the files before glancing at him from the corner of her eye, the smile turning to more of a smirk. "I want to see yours."

"Why? You know everything."

She shrugged. "I'm curious about his words about you. You were always his golden boy. I wonder if he left that in writing."

"He wouldn't have dared," Tom chuckled, but motioned for her to go ahead. If there was one person in St Regis he could trust with it, it was Gina. Even after everything, that was still true.

The first thing that popped up under Jacob Phelps was a photo from about ten years prior. It was strange, because while it was most certainly Tom in the photo, there was something he barely recognized in the vacant sort of look in his own blue eyes. They were empty, ready to be filled with whatever emotion was necessary to fool a mark or get him where he needed to go. He had always had expressive eyes, but the life he had lived had taught him how to close everything off. Liz had talked about the look. She called it hiding behind his walls, and he never knew quite what she meant, but looking at the photo of the young man dressed in a t-shirt and hoodie, staring dangerously at the camera, he knew that had to be it, and he finally understood why she hated it so much.

There were a few more photos, ranging from when Bud had picked him up at fourteen to the one that had caused him to pause. There were notes about his time there, the operations that he'd gone on, and his kill list. It was longer than he remembered, and that was just what he'd done for St Regis that had ended up in Bud's records.

"I guess this is what happens to our juvie records when we joined up, huh?" he mused softly. Bud had told him that, effectively, Jacob Phelps had died the day that he enrolled in St Regis. Died wasn't the best way to put it, he'd found out eventually. Never existed was a much more apt description. McCready had connections to wipe out signs of existence through multiple levels of government records, leaving no easy-to-find trace of his students. If their prints were run, if somehow their files were pulled, rarely was found. It wasn't perfect, of course. Liz had uncovered information on him after she'd gotten his real name while holding him captive on her boat, and once she'd had Justin's name she'd found more, but none of it had been solid. They were connections found by a clever agent that was better at her job than most. Most wouldn't have found a trace. Her team certainly hadn't when they had looked into him after she'd found his go-box.

A thought struck him and Tom stepped forward. "You think there's anything on medical here?"

"Why?"

"My daughter."

"Is she sick?"

"No, but Liz and I have never really been able to fill in a lot of the genetic gaps for her medical records. It seems like something Bud would have had. It won't go back to my family, probably. There never was much on them from what I understood, but it might have my medical records from my time in foster care. It's something to add, at least for Liz and me."

Gina shrugged and started flipping through his file, digging a little deeper into it and making it clear that she wasn't going to just pop it not a flash drive for him like she had Masterson's information. She would give him a peek, but he wasn't walking out with more than one St Regis record that day, even if it was his own.

She stopped suddenly, eyeing a folder suspiciously.

Tom tilted his head. "What's that?"

"Not sure." She clicked on it, a collection of hand-written notes popping up as if he'd taken the time at some point to scan them in. Both Tom and Gina looked them over, one by one. They began simply enough in detailing out his education - mostly the specialized attention that Bud had given him throughout his training -, his aptitude, and his skill sets that were keyed in on and developed throughout his time at St Regis. At first Tom thought that maybe they were simply hand written notes that Bud had decided he wanted to hold onto, adding them to the file marked clearly as _Jacob Phelps_ , until they moved a bit further in and a photo appeared. It was of a little boy, a toddler, grinning at the camera. He was all blue eyes and shaggy brown hair, about the same colour that Agnes' was now. On the bottom of the photo was written _Christopher Hargrave, 1987_.

"Is it mixed in?" Gina asked with her head tilted to study the photo.

"I don't think so," Tom managed, a sinking feeling making him nauseous. "Keep going."

When Reddington had told him that his real name was Christopher Hargrave and that he'd been separated from his real family as a child - funny thing was that he'd never given him a straight answer on how that separation had happened, and Tom had given up asking pretty quickly - it had never occurred to him that Bud would have known anything about it. His foster care records said that he had been removed from his biological mother - a Rebecca Phelps, according to those records - due to neglect. Those had been the records that Bud had supplied to a young Jacob Phelps when the teenager had taken him up on his offer, so when Red had dropped the bomb of familial information on him - something he had not received what he considered definite evidence to - on him, he'd just assumed that Bud had given him the information that the foster system had had. He'd been Jacob Phelps as far back as he could remember, after all, so why question it? Now, though, as he stared up at the large screen with information dated in the mid 1980's on Howard Hargrave - former CIA, retired to start up a defense contract company called Halcyon Aegis - and Susan Scott Hargrave - also a former CIA officer and daughter of a decorated Intelligence Officer that had, apparently, gone on to win a handful of elections on Capitol Hill - and their young son, Tom couldn't ignore the fact that Bud _had_ to have known where he had come from.

He didn't think that would have bothered him quite as much. There were plenty of things Bud didn't tell him. Some Tom understood, some irked him, but there would have been no point in telling a teenage boy that Bud wanted to recruit - one that, if he admitted it or not, desperately wanted a family - that he hadn't been abandoned, but instead he'd been taken from his family. Tom understood that. It was a business decision, but the further they dug, the less it looked like it was quite that passive of a decision. There were notes about their movements, security, and surveillance. There were detailed notes on Howard and Scottie's personal records, medical records, psychological records, and personality write ups. The depth of detail was unnerving and invasive, as were the photos that followed. They were of a young Christopher Hargrave, no older than he had been in the photo that Scottie kept in her public office of her family at the beach. These were surveillance photos of the boy with his mother and father at the beach. One after another left Tom needing to see what followed, until he came across one with the boy sitting in a chair in a dank room, his hair going in all directions and looking like he'd been doused with water. His clothes hung off of him and he looked at the camera with a wide, terrified expression.

There were several photos of the same caliber, mixed with notes that looked like some sort of sick experiment. The boy came from a line of individuals proven in the field of intelligence. Bud's scrawled handwriting theorized that if given the proper motivation and if the child's environment was structured in a certain way, that he could be molded into what McCready referred to as a perfect soldier, building on natural instincts and warping them with external force. The next photo was several years later, and this one was marked _Jacob Phelps, Pemberly Home, 1991_. It was, without a doubt, the same boy that had previously been named Christopher Hargrave.

"Jacob?" Gina called softly.

"He did it," Tom breathed, the words catching in his throat and he nearly choked on them. "He…"

"Breathe," his former partner instructed and he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was strange, even after knowing her so long, to find something that actually brought a gentler side of Gina out. Apparently finding out that the man she'd grown up with had been kidnapped and intentionally put through hell so that he could be molded into what McCready wanted was enough to do it. Or maybe she was just wondering if he'd done the same to her. If he'd been the one to put her through her own levels of hell as a child.

"How could he have known? How could he have set it all up?" Tom managed, feeling himself spiraling dangerously. Gina was right. He needed to breathe. He needed to regain control. He needed _answers_.

"The Major had connections everywhere," she answered quietly. "Maybe more than we even knew."

"Apparently. I thought… I just thought that he knew what he did from my social services records. I didn't think he _caused_ it."

"It's twisted," she murmured.

Tom reached forward, flipping through several pages of notes, reading as quickly as he could while still retaining the information. There were references to situations that he'd been though in his time in foster care - terrible moments, moments that he had felt like had chipped at his soul long before his time with St Regis had - on records of his operations while working for Bud. The links were clear. McCready believed that because Jacob had learned the hard and painful lesson he had in the system that he'd been able to perform with the level of disconnect that he'd had. There were marks on the notes, showing where the man that had raised him showed success in his theories.

The last page, dated 2008, was a copy of the contract with Raymond Reddington that Bud had written on, his notes acknowledging his successful experiment in taking a boy that had inherited potential and making him into, as the notes indicated, the best operative that had come through St Regis since its conception. There was a note at the very end though that stated that, in the end, the experiment with Jacob Phelps had been a failure, the "boy proving to be a disappointment in his emotional attachments to Elizabeth Keen," but other students set on the same track after him were showing great potential.

"It looks like this is the direction he's taken more recently," Gina breathed, pulling up other notes on a smaller screen. "There are dozens of names in here, some still in the system."

"Hell," Tom breathed. "Did he really expect me to go through with this? To do this to other kids?"

"There's a lot he thought you would do. Listen, I have to work my way through all of this. It's going to take a while and I have some decisions to make. Take your file on Masterson and get rid of him. I'll…. I'll delete your file for you. As far as St Regis records are concerned, Jacob Phelps'll just be another ghost. Suits you."

"Jacob Phelps never existed, not really."

Gina snorted. "Since when has that bothered you? Be whoever the hell you want. It's what you're good at."

Tom nodded slowly, clutching the jump drive in his hand tightly and started out of the room. He paused at the door, his muscles tight and he didn't look back as he spoke. "You don't have to do it, Gina. You don't have to run it the way he did." He turned slightly, watching her out of the very corner of his eye. "I know you think you have to be him, and that's why you're having so much trouble. You're not him. You never have been. Now you don't have to be. Neither of us do."

She chuckled. "Go play house, Tom Keen."

He snorted, shaking his head and laughing hollowly as he left the room he'd wanted to see for the better part of his life, and now regretted setting foot in. He'd received confirmation of his own identity, but in the worst of ways. Where one answer popped up, a thousand more took its place, and these left him feeling ill.

A soft buzzing came from his pocket and Liz's face appeared across his screen. He pulled in a deep breath and clicked accept, holding it to his ear. "Hey, babe. Got what we need, and I'll be back as soon as I can."

" _You okay? You sound funny._ "

"Yes and no. I'll tell you when I get back." He moved through the doors, feeling several set of eyes on him as he walked towards the waiting car. He'd been there only a short time, yet rumours were already spreading. He'd forgotten how that happened around the campus with the recruits. "Love you," he said firmly, not caring who heard. He didn't have to hide anything. He loved her, and that was one truth about himself that Bud never could take from him, no matter how hard he had tried.

* * *

TBC

Notes: I've been interested with the idea of dismantling St Regis for some time now, but a conversation with a friend of mine over on Tumblr led to this particular plotline. The idea of Bud orchestrating little Christopher's kidnapping to set into motion a chain of events that would mold him into a first-class operative fascinates me. It would make sense why Scottie was never able to find him as a child, even with her vast resources. I'd love to hear what you guys think of the idea.

Next time - The task force and Tom set up to go after Justin Masterson while Scottie gets the file that Reddington promised.


	6. Part Six

**Part Six**

Elizabeth Keen had thought she couldn't possibly be more sickened with the St Regis program than she had been before. It was late in the afternoon when Tom had gotten back from New York and it was going to take them a long while to sift through all of the information Gina had provided. Cooper had released them with a few documents to take home and look over so that they could get Agnes down for the night, but it hadn't been until dinner was eaten and Agnes had had her bath and put to bed that Tom started in on what he and Gina had discovered on his own file. He spoke with little to no emotion in his voice, detailing out what he'd seen in a very straightforward sort of manner, as if he were explaining something entirely disconnected from himself. When he'd finished, they sat in silence for a long moment in their living room before Liz reached out and let her fingers brush his. Her husband offered a tired smile, taking her offered support and hand. "I just thought you should know."

"If Gina hadn't killed him, I would have," Liz growled softly. "Sick, twisted bastard."

"Yeah," Tom agreed, the word riding out on a breath.

"Do you think Gina will go after those kids? That she'll use them like McCready did?" She almost hated to ask him that. It was hard to see, but under the layers of indifference Tom was in pain. There were a few certainties he clung to, and he had always been one to defend St Regis. He wouldn't say that it was a _good_ organized, but to him it was a lesser of the evils. These kids were in terrible situations and McCready offered them a choice to take control in a way. It hadn't been perfect, he had told her once, but it had worked. Now, she could see the conflict in his eyes, like the world he'd known had been upended. She knew the feeling well, and it hurt like hell.

"I don't know. Probably. Maybe. I mean, they're already in crap situations, right? She might use those students to secure her position after Masterson goes down and then change things up. She said she had a lot of decisions to make once she'd been through all of the information."

Liz gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "So we get Masterson, Gina gets St Regis, and Scottie takes a potentially dangerous advisory off the table. Red too."

"Sounds about right," Tom agreed. He leaned forward, pressed a kiss to her knuckles, and then released her hand so that he could slump back against the back of the couch and slouch down. "This should feel more like a win."

"I know."

"It is a win, right?"

A soft laugh escaped her and Liz shifted from her place in the chair to sit next to him on the couch. She felt an arm go around her and pull her close, a kiss planted firmly against the side of her head and she wrapped her own arm around his middle so she could lean against his chest. "We have to get Masterson. That will be a win. Maybe not the war, but definitely a big battle."

"I just want us to be safe," he sighed. "That's what matters most."

She was so used to him taking on the role of the optimistic one between them that it always shook her a bit when he lost his footing like he was right now. She couldn't blame him after everything. "We will be. McCready's dead. He can't hurt us and we'll take out Masterson. If you say that Gina won't be a threat to Agnes, I believe you."

He huffed a little and loosed a long breath. "I guess that dream makes a little more sense though… with Bud and the water. I think he took me. I think he just waited and…Hell, I've seen a lot of screwed up things, but this…"

She could see what he wasn't saying in his expression. "We're not going to let anyone take Agnes from us ever again," Liz swore to him. "You and me, remember? You told me that we could protect her. That's what you said when I was terrified to keep her, you remember? You convinced me, and I've never regretted it, even after everything with… with my father. She is safe and we're going to keep her that way. There won't be a person brave enough to try to take her from us."

Tom chuckled softly and she felt his grip tighten. She glanced up at him, trying to meet his gaze at her odd angle. "Are you going to tell Scottie? Now that you have definite proof?"

"I don't know," he murmured. "Can we talk about that after we get Masterson?"

"But we will talk about it," she murmured softly.

"I know you think… Liz…"

He straightened, rather suddenly though, and Liz blinked her eyes open, startled by the way abrupt stop to his thoughts, and saw Agnes standing in the living room, hair sticking out in every direction and her teddy bear with its red bowtie dangling from one hand. "Hey, baby, what are you doing up?" she asked and Tom released her so that she could sit up and reach for their daughter.

Agnes instantly crawled into her lap, settling down between her parents on the couch. "Had a bad dream," she answered sleepily. "There was a monster and I was scared."

"It's okay, baby girl," Tom said gently. "You want to sleep with us tonight?"

Liz couldn't help the small smile that tugged at her lips as Agnes nodded and jumped down just long enough for her daddy to get himself up and scoop her up into his arms. She wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head down on his shoulder, eyes already lulling again. He needed this as much as she did, Liz thought.

They got changed and into bed, Agnes already curled up in the middle and Hudson looking up at Liz expectedly as she and Tom crawled into their sides of the bed. "Might as well," she grumbled lightly and patted the end of the bed, signaling the dog he could jump up. He did, moving a little slower than he used to, and curled up at their feet.

Liz eased her way under the covers, finding a bear in her face as her daughter sprawled in the bed. The sooner they took down Masterson, the safer they would all feel.

* * *

Reddington had come through with the information, and Scottie had been asked to be put in touch directly with his contact. It had been a request that the contact had denied, initially, but for some reason Scottie's name had inspired a bit more confidence. It was enough to make her curious, if nothing else, and she had assured Red that she would need to meet with the individual herself if she were to secure that St Regis was dismantled, therefore ensuring that Elizabeth Keen and her team did not pursue it in full.

She had wanted to meet the contact at her offices, but the young woman set the meet in an old warehouse. Well, Scottie hadn't had a good, old-fashioned clandestine meet in quite some time. She supposed she was due.

The door at the far end of the large room opened, the sound echoing off of the concrete floors and Scottie turned. She spotted a young woman approaching her, dressed in all black and in heeled boots that looked like they could do some damage and that she was the type of woman that would know how to use them for just that. She sauntered a little, her hair blonde and curling against her shoulder, brown eyes studying her as she approached. They looked Scottie up and down, as if studying her, and she frowned. "So you're Susan Hargrave."

"I am. You must be Red's contact. Gina Zanetakos, isn't it? I have an operative that knows you."

"Jacob, yes I know."

"He goes by a different name these days, but yes," Scottie answered, her pleasant tone in contrast with Zanetakos' sharp one. "He seems to think that you are the best choice to run your organization and that St Regis and Halcyon can co-exist with you at St Regis' head."

Zanetakos gave a short shrug, tilting her head a little as she spoke. "He and I have a history."

"I'm sure you do. Do you have the file that I'm looking for?"

The younger woman pursed her lips, her careful mask of indifference cracking ever so slightly and Scottie saw a glimpse of something just beneath. "Yes, but before I'm willing to release it, I need some information."

"It's on one of your operatives," Scottie acknowledged.

"Former."

"Former."

Zanetakos sighed, reaching into her jacket pocket and pulling a jump drive from it. "I assume you know whose file this is?"

"I do."

"Why now? You hired him nearly three years ago. Why are you just now checking into his St Regis files?"

Scottie's gaze drifted to the jump drive. "I'm looking for someone, and I believe that your friend may have information on him. If he were going to tell me directly, he would have done so already. He's a good operative, though I'm sure you know that, and I don't feel the need to jeopardize his place here unless there's a reason to."

"Who are you looking for that you think Jacob can help you find?" Zanetakos asked carefully.

"Someone that's been missing a long time. That's all I have an interest in telling you, Ms Zanetakos. I'm sure you understand that I don't know you, therefore my trust is very limited."

"It often is with people like us," the head of St Regis murmured. "I've known him for a long time. We've… protected each other for a long time."

If Scottie didn't know better, she would have thought that this young woman had feelings for her operative. It might explain why Elizabeth Keen seemed so opposed to her if she were a former girlfriend or lover. She offered the younger woman what was often a disarming smile and decided that the truth would get her further than a lie in this case. "I'm not interested in hurting Tom, or Jacob, I suppose. I just need to know what he knows about my son. That's all that matters. The set of numbers and his name was a piece of the puzzle that I was given and up until now it's been a dead end. I'm hoping your intel will change that. Your payment is waiting in escrow, as long as you're still willing to do business."

Zanetakos watched her for a long moment, as if weighing her words. She seemed to decide that she believed them after a long moment and she handed it over. Scottie took hold of the offered thumb drive and the blonde held tight to the other end, her voice low and dangerous. "If you hurt him, there won't be a place you can hide."

"You'd have to get in line behind his wife, I'm afraid," Scottie answered with a smile and tugged the file out of her fingers. The younger woman turned and she cleared her throat. "I'd be happy to double what I'm paying you."

"I'm sorry?"

"I said that I'd be happy to double what I'm paying you. I'll be frank with you, Ms Zanetakos. I find what Bill McCready did - taking children, training them at such an impressionable age - disgusting. I get the impression that the information you received with Tom's help - my operative, by the way, who went to you on my order - wasn't the only snag to a smooth transition into heading up your organization. You need money to finance what you lost."

"What's the catch?" Gina Zanetakos asked skeptically.

"I want you to dismantle St Regis."

The blonde snorted. "You'll pay me the money I need to make it work so that I'll dismantle it? Not a deal I'm interested in."

"No, I would hire you directly and doubling what I'm paying you would be your signing bonus. I've done a lot of thinking in the last few days since Tom brought a request to my desk. He wanted me to reach out to you and offer to acquire St Regis. I just can't stomach that. I really can't, so here's my alternative offer: I am willing to hire you and any operatives that I deem suitable for Halcyon Aegis. St Regis and the program will be dismantled in full. There will be no further students acquired or put through that program."

"And the children in the program now? The ones… set to enter?" she asked, surprising Scottie a little with the question. She had expected to have to work a bit more.

"We'll set up an organization especially for them. We'll work with them. There's no reason to return them to a system that obviously does not work for them. There are many foster families out there that are fantastic, but for whatever reason, the children that McCready brought in didn't find them. We'll work with them on an individual basis depending on what they want to do and what is best for them, not just fit them where there's an opening."

Zanetakos nodded slowly. "I'll think about it."

"You should. I think you'd excel in a place like our Grey Matters division. Your friend has." Scottie reached into her purse and pulled a business card from in. "Think about it, let us handle the rest of the mess with Justin Masterson so that it goes smoothly, and then give me a call if you decide to take me up on the offer or would like to discuss it further."

* * *

"Every time I think I've seen it all, someone goes and does something ten times worse."

Tom looked up from where he was squatted down, a pair of binoculars pressed against his face and peering at the guards set up around the building Masterson was in. Donald Ressler was in the process of joining him and the younger man felt his chest tighten strangely at the idea of Ressler knowing what he had told Liz. It wasn't that his wife had a habit of blurting out very private matters, even to her team, and certainly not without mentioning it beforehand, so surely Ressler was referring to something other than the new information about St Regis. He hoped. "What'dya mean?"

Ressler motioned to the structure they had under surveillance. "Your pal. I mean, seriously, I've seen a lot of things, but that's one sick bastard according to the file you brought us."

"You should have had to work with him," Tom snorted. "Sick bastard doesn't begin to cover it."

His wife's partner grimaced and Tom could barely see him looking from the corner of his eye. He raised the binoculars back to his eyes and went back to the job in front of him. "Are they all like that?"

"All who?"

"The people you used to work with."

"Some. Some are just doing what they need to to survive."

"I don't know how you stomached working with a guy like that," Ressler grumbled.

Tom snorted. "Same way you stomach working with me, I guess. There's always someone worse than you and worse than that."

If he'd hoped that the agent would miss the bitterness that worked its way into his voice, he was wrong. Ressler stiffened, the telltale sign of knowing something was off kilter, but not knowing exactly how to approach what could be an emotional land mine with a man that he wouldn't have quite called a friend. "Something happen?" Ressler ventured hesitantly.

"Just something I shouldn't be surprised at," Tom huffed. "If I were in there, I'd pick the center-most room closest to the stairwell. It'd shield him from open fire from the outside, forcing people in to have to face guards that are ready. It'd out the team entering at a huge disadvantage. You know, if we didn't have the two best techs working with us."

Ressler rolled his eyes as a chuckle sounded through the comm system. " _Smooth, Keen, but while flattery will get you a lot, it won't get you out of the rounds of drinks you owe me. Keep trying though_."

"Can't blame a guy for trying, Dumont," Tom laughed. "How're you guys coming?"

Aram's voice rang through the comm this time. " _Inside the building we have a total of five separate heat signatures. Dumont has hacked into one of the laptops to get a visual._ "

"You guys are the best. Where exactly are they at?"

" _You were right about choosing a center room,_ " Aram said, " _and getting to those windows unseen is going to be difficult_."

" _I'm showing a skylight,_ " Dumont offered. " _You think you can pull something like last year's Dubai op with Rowan_?"

"Rowan didn't go anywhere near that skylight in Dubai. Don't let her lie to you," Tom chuckled. "Yeah, I'll get up there. You have a clear view? How's the opposite roof?"

" _Clear as usual, but wisecracks aside, you're going to need backup to go up there. They're armed to the teeth."_

"Of course they are." Tom glanced to his side, Ressler having kept quiet and listening. "You game for a climb?"

"I'm surprised you wouldn't prefer to have Liz with you on this," the federal agent answered with a quirked eyebrow.

Tom shrugged and stood. "She and Samar will have the ground covered, I'm sure."

"You don't want her up there."

The nonchalant expression he'd been wearing faded just a bit as Tom checked his ammo, avoiding Ressler's sharp gaze. "We'll be the first ones in, and that psychopath has already threatened my daughter. I don't want him anywhere near my wife if I can help it."

"You're going to kill him?"

Dark blue eyes flickered up to meet a set of a lighter colour. "It'll probably come down to that, knowing him. If that's going to be a problem, Boy Scout, now's the time."

He watched his wife's partner weigh the situation carefully. He wasn't a cold blooded murderer, Tom knew, but he wasn't naive enough to toss aside the clear understanding that they'd likely have to kill the man in there. Tom had seen him take down his fair share before without blinking an eye, so he wasn't entirely sure where the hesitation was coming from.

"You going to be good with that?" he asked at last, his voice serious.

So that was it. He was nervous Tom would freeze. The dark haired man offered a lopsided smirk. "The man threatened my family. What do you think?"

Ressler gave a brief nod. "Let's get this guy then."

* * *

TBC

Notes: Well, this story worked out nicely. This will be updated today and then I plan to have the final chapter up next week about this time. And then Blacklist is back! Woot! I'm insanely ready to know if Agnes will be okay, how the Keens are going to get out of there everything, and exactly what Red and Kirk's past is. So many questions, as always.

I know not everyone who reads my stories here is on Tumblr, so I like to give you a heads up every now and again: I have a strange little AU collection started over there. I do _plan_ to put it here... eventually. I just can't promise you when, and I only will if I get enough of the little snippets that it's worth creating a collection for. It could also turn into a full story. I really don't know yet.

The premise is something that could turn into an AU to rival Everything Back to You's length. The idea is that Christopher Hargrave was never taken as a child (or at least was retrieved and doesn't have clear memories of it all, because hey, a three year old's memories are not overly reliable) and that he's been raised as the sole heir to Halcyon Aegis. It's six months after Reddington turns himself into the FBI and Christopher is brought in on a case that they need Halcyon's help on, where he meets Special Agent Elizabeth Scott. The twists and turns will likely be numerous with Tom/Christopher growing up with two (fairly loving) parents, having known Raymond Reddington (his father's good friend) his entire life, and being the head of the Grey Matters division and sneaking out into the field against his mother's preferences. The reason I am not currently doing more than writing a few connected shorts is that I feel like I will likely get a LOT more information once Redemption airs, and something of this magnitude really does need to wait. So until then, I'm posting these little one-shots up on Tumblr under the tag **#HargraveDrabbles** You can find them under my blog (which is under TakadaSaiko) if you're so inclined. Feel free to drop me a note if you do! You guys know how much I love your feedback. Even if you don't have a Tumblr account you can still leave an anonymous message. Most of these will be very Keen2 centered due to the fact that the central plot will likely only be solidified for the story after I have the information I'm waiting on about Scottie and Halcyon from the spinoff. Until then, Christopher Hargrave has his work cut out for him, because Elizabeth Scott doesn't trust him. It doesn't help that he gave her a false name when they first meet :P

Anyway, for this story, Next Time - The Task Force and Tom go after Masterson and Scottie learns more than she ever expected to.


	7. Part Seven

**Part Seven**

It was a simple enough plan, but if there was one thing Tom had learned in the course of his life, it was that even the simplest of plans turned complicated at the least convenient of moments. Dumont and Aram were watching from all the angles that the team couldn't see, Samar was based at the most likely exit with a sniper rifle, and a couple of other feds that Tom didn't know personally were stationed similarly at the others. Liz had a collection of feds with a couple of on-loan Halcyon specialists with her. Tom would have preferred Rowan to have been along for this, but she was still wrapping up the op with Solomon, so he took what he could, including the reluctant acceptance that his wife had given him when he pitched the plan. He'd even pretended he didn't hear the way that she asked her partner to watch his back. They had finally had to accept that, no matter how good they were at their jobs, the other was going to worry.

Even with her as safe as she could be, he worried over her, but he had to push that aside now. He had a job to do, and the completion of that job would secure a little more safety for his family going forward.

The floor plan showed the building that Masterson was hiding out in to be one story, but with a high ceiling that put the roof within jumping distance of the building next to it. There was no point in fighting the guards at the entrance points when they could take the roof and use the skylight to attack and push them out towards the doors where either Samar's snipers or Liz's assault team would put Masterson down. Simple.

Nothing was ever simple.

"What the-" Ressler managed as Tom grabbed him by the jacket and dragged him behind the air conditioning unit for cover.

"Shut up," the younger man hissed. "Look."

"Son of a bitch is using the roof for his exit," Ressler growled.

" _That's impossible. We're looking at them and the heat signatures haven't moved_ ," Dumont grumbled from the other end of the comms.

"No offence, but I'll take our line of sight here over your heat signatures," Tom snapped. "He's fooling them somehow."

"We're easy targets up here," Ressler murmured, shifting so that he could move quickly. They were supposed to have surprise on their side.

" _Stay put_ ," Liz's voice filtered through their ear pieces. " _We're on our way up the southern stairwell._ "

"Might not be an option," Tom answered and glanced at Ressler. The agent nodded. "There are more people with him than we thought. Be careful."

" _You too_."

Tom looked around to a man that he'd once disliked thoroughly. Funny how things changed. He didn't question for a moment that Ressler would watch his back in this. "Might be stretching the limits of your sharp shooting."

Ressler smirked. "Always up for a challenge. You think this is a trap?"

"Probably. He loves laying them so that he feels like the smartest man in the room. Time to prove him wrong."

They waited in silence, tense and ready, until Masterson and his people had crossed from one roof to theirs, before either man swiveled around to the opposite side of their hiding place.

Tom was well trained in marksmanship, and while he'd never admit it out loud, he was impressed with Ressler's talent in it. If there was someone out of Liz's team he'd be willing to go into a shootout with, Ressler was at the top of the list. One of Masterson's men fell, then another, and Tom got a shot off to take down a third. He didn't miss the arrogant smirk tilting his former colleague's lips. He had planned this.

The shouted warning was cut off as a bullet clipped him, sending him stumbling and growling a low curse. He risked the briefest glance at where it had torn through his jacket, leaving blood in its wake across the top of his arm. He winced and moved to take cover, popping out long enough to take his opponent down. He spotted Masterson making his way towards Ressler and nothing about that seemed like a good idea. The agent was good enough in a scuffle, but he wouldn't stand a chance against Masterson. The man was in an entirely different league.

Tom's instincts kicked in almost too late and he turned, receiving a hard blow to the jaw for his effort. He staggered, and barely shifted out of the way of the next one. He finally saw his attacker, a young man that he had coached personally in one of the classes he'd covered at St Regis. A strange sort of feeling of betrayal washed through him and he shoved at it hard. He didn't have that luxury when he was fighting for his life.

The younger man whipped around and Tom danced out of his way, blocking a blow and swinging around one of his own. He saw the glint of the knife and he didn't let himself second guess his action. The fight was really too close in for a gun, but he put a step of distance between them, raised the glock he had on him, and fired without letting himself hesitate. He paused then, for the briefest of moments, as one of his own former students crumbled in front of him, and even as every instinct he had developed in his life screamed that he wasn't done with the fight, he couldn't tear his gaze away from the vacant stare of a young man that hadn't been any any different than he had just a few years before.

A sharp cry tore his attention and he turned, finding Ressler hitting the roof hard. To his credit, he was already picking himself up, even as Masterson came at him again, catching him hard in the ribs and sending him sprawling. Tom spotted his gun out of reach and what was left of Justin's detail hanging back to watch the show.

Tom tapped his earpiece. "Liz, where's that backup?"

" _Working on it_ ," his wife's strained voice came through after a short pause. " _He knew we were coming._ "

"Be careful."

" _You guys okay for a few more minutes?_ "

"We will be, yeah," he promised. "Just be safe. We've got it up here." It wasn't a lie, necessarily, as much as a hope. He switched the comm to silent and started forward. "Hey!"

Justin paused, half bent down to grab Ressler by the collar. The agent was trying to shake off the hard blow, but still looked dazed. Masterson smirked. "Protecting a fed other than your wife, Jake? You really have sunk, haven't you?"

"You and I both know you don't give a damn about him," Tom answered, squaring his shoulders.

"And we both know you do. Your wife's partner, right? What do you think she'll say when she finds out you couldn't get to him fast enough?"

"You'll be wasting a bullet," Tom assured him, "and you know you don't have the time for that. Not and try to take me down too."

"You won't walk away from it, Phelps," the other man warned, but Tom could see that that he'd already decided he was worth more to him than Ressler was. All Tom had to do was stay alive until backup came.

"Guess we'll find out."

* * *

They had underestimated the support that Masterson had backing his claim. He'd been toying with them, and that just made her want to take him down even more.

A clearing opened up and Liz and the others moved forward to the stairs that led to the roof.

The afternoon sun caused her to squint hard, but as her eyes adjusted what she saw made her chest tighten. There were three still-standing men off to the side, one with his boot pressed down against Ressler's back, shoving him to the ground and a gun trained him to keep him there. Tom and Masterson were a few yards away, moving fast as they exchanged blows. No one had noticed her small team of people yet, but there wouldn't be a clear shot with the way the fight was pulled in close. All they could do was take out his people and hope Tom got the upper hand.

Liz barely motioned and the team with her engaged Masterson's. The one that had Ressler pinned was the first one to go down and the other two followed. If Tom or Masterson noticed, neither of them gave any indication. They were both in a fight for their lives, terrifyingly well matched. She cringed as she forced her gaze back to her partner. "You okay?"

"Guy lands a hell of a punch," Ressler huffed. "And they're going to make it hard to get a clean shot off."

"I think that may be Masterson's goal," Liz growled.

Tom couldn't seem to put distance between them as he danced and tried to dodge. Masterson had to know it was over. The moment they had a clean shot, he was a dead man. That just made him more dangerous, and they were getting too close to the edge. If he decided he was going over and took Tom with him...

"There," Ressler snapped and Liz hadn't realized how many guns were ready to take the shot.

It all happened at once: the echoes of gunfire, Masterson jerking back and dropping hard, and Tom hitting the roof too. The fear that swept through her was instantly relieved as her husband rolled, waited half a beat to make sure they were done, and then popped back up. He looked directly at one of the gunmen that had been on loan from Scottie and glared, the other man chuckling. "Where's the faith, Keen? I didn't hit ya."

"Too damn close, Murphey. I told you I've had enough holes in my body that aren't supposed to be there for one lifetime."

Liz snorted, drawing his attention and she watched his expression soften. "Hey babe. You okay?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him, a small smile playing. "I'm not the one getting shot at."

Tom chuckled and stepped out of the way of one of the agents that knelt down and pronounced Justin Masterson dead. His expression closed off at that, and Liz wasn't sure if he was trying to hide his relief or something else. The situation was nothing if it wasn't complicated, and Tom often took longer than most to work through his own emotions.

"So it's done, huh?" Ressler asked quietly. "Just doesn't seem right taking out one bad guy to let another one stand where he was trying to get."

Liz loosed a breath. "Believe me I know."

"Lesser of the evils," Tom said as he joined them. As he moved closer his wife could see the signs of the fight starting to show: a cut at his hairline, another across the opposite eyebrow, and that eye was bloodshot, signs of bruising already starting to show. He would have a full black eye by morning. There was blood on his arm, and from the tear in his jacket it looked like it was his. He was rubbing a little at his jaw after speaking, and the knuckles of the hand he reached out with were cracked and scraped from the fight. He'd given as hard as he got.

Liz took the offered hand. "We'll figure it out," she said softly, hoping he wouldn't fight her on that. He looked too tired to.

Tom offered a small smile. "Yeah. You okay, Ressler?"

"Peachy," Liz's partner answered, echoing Tom's own snarky response to the question just days earlier. "I had him, though."

"Keep telling yourself that, Boy Scout," Tom said with a lopsided grin.

"Keen?" Murphy called, and Liz turned with Tom before she realized it's been him the man was calling for. "Ms Hargrave said to switch your comm over."

Tom nodded and squeezed Liz's hand. "Be right back."

Liz watched him reach up to the earpiece and switched it to a private channel. Ressler loosed a breath behind her and she glanced back. She could see the same questions weighing on him that had been clawing at her since everything had begun. It didn't feel right to let St Regis continue when they had their foot in the door to taking them out. She understood Tom's hesitation, but if they continued to do nothing, more children would go through what he did. And it was worse than either had expected. Much worse.

She opened her mouth to try to find the words to reassure her partner that this wasn't permanent when Tom's voice cut her off. "Gina is going to dismantle St Regis."

Liz blinked hard. "What? How?"

"I don't know. Scottie has the intel, and I'm heading in to get the full story." Without warning he pulled her in close and kissed her, and Liz felt the relief pass through it, pulling her smile from her.

"You said something."

He shrugged. "Or she realized she couldn't be Bud. Worse things, right?"

"Go. We've got this."

He pressed one more quick kiss to her lips before starting for the exit. Liz's smile didn't fade until she turned, focusing herself on the task at hand.

* * *

He wasn't sure how Scottie had gotten word of Gina's decision quite so fast, but he wasn't surprised. She had eyes and ears everywhere, and St Regis' direction had the potential to affect her company. It certainly had her attention.

Tom strode into the building that Scottie used for her various meetings, parties, and even a private wing that she stayed in from time to time. Trey met him before he made it to the stairs, and the other man paused, as if what he was going to say was lost. The look he was giving him was a strange one, and Tom cracked a grin. "Do I look that bad?" he chuckled.

"I… No. Sorry. Ms Hargrave is waiting for you in her office."

Tom's smile faded just a little, Trey's reaction not quite what he would have expected. It wasn't like it was the first time he'd waltzed into one of Scottie's offices without having a chance to clean up after a job. His boss' right hand man wasn't squeamish.

He shrugged it off as he moved past him and up the stairs towards the office. He knocked once, hearing an acknowledgment from the other side, and pushed it open to find the dark haired woman sitting at her desk. She didn't look up immediate and Tom stood to wait, doing his best not to let his mind wander too badly with everything that he had learned and everything that happened.

Scottie cleared her throat after a moment and glanced up. "Close the door behind you," she said as she sat back in her chair, leaving her laptop open in front of her.

Tom fought the sweeping feeling of being ordered to the principal's office as he took a seat across from her. "So, Gina's taking it apart?"

"She is. I extended an offer to her."

He blinked hard. "You decided to acquire St Regis?" After how adamantly she had been against it, that was surprising.

"No. Your friend Gina and I have come to an agreement. She will dismantle the organization, I will give the children a place to go through a foundation set up for them, and she has the option on the table to work for Halcyon. I will be acquiring any active operatives that fit my criteria."

Tom nodded slowly. "Sounds like the best that could have happened. How the hell did you get a meet with Gina though? She's a bit… distrusting right now."

"I hired her for a job," Scottie answered. "I haven't been… entirely honest with you, Tom. Some time ago I found a link between my search for my son and a man named Jacob Phelps out of the St Regis program. I wasn't entirely sure what that link was. I thought, for a long while, that perhaps he had recruited Christopher into St Regis."

Tom remained still, his expression even and relaxed as if he were simply there to hear a debrief, but something was wrong. He wasn't sure yet if Scottie had made a connection between him and the name he had grown up under, but if she hadn't yet she was close.

"But then you didn't say anything. Not one damn word, knowing how long I've looked for my son," Scottie continued and there was a hint of anger there. "I didn't know if there was a reasonable explanation or not, so I acquired you records from Gina Zanetakos. You should know that she left it along with a threat to ensure your safety."

"You have my file?" Tom asked, his voice quieter than he meant for it to be. She knew. If she had his file she knew everything that he had just learned. Not just their personal connection, but the utter betrayal that he still hasn't fully processed yet. He wasn't ready for this.

"I do," she said quietly. "Have you seen it in full?"

He gave a very terse nod and watched Scottie loose a long breath.

"Were you planning to say anything?" she asked very quietly.

"Masterson was first and everything else was second."

She nodded slowly and folded her hands on the desk. There was a long silence between them and Tom fought the urge to squirm. After a long moment he cleared his throat. "Listen, I know what that file says. I'm still…. processing what Bud did."

"The Major."

"He raised me." Tom forced his gaze to meet hers, the words no secret between them, but they felt different now. Almost like a knife being twisted. "When I grew up with every understanding that I… That I was abandoned to the system by any family I might have had, he saw something worth saving when no one else did."

"He manipulated you," she said softly. "I've been… I've been searching for you for so long. He _took_ -"

"I'm going to stop you right there," Tom cut her off, squaring his shoulders and schooling his expression. "Whatever you _think_ is about to happen, whatever reunion or revelation you've cooked up over the last thirty years as the way it should be, just stop. You may have looked, but I learned a long time ago not to need to be found. I learned it when I was told my mother abandoned me and when there wasn't a foster family that I landed with that wanted me, and the ones that did made life just that much worse. It's what I've believed most of my life and it's…" He stopped, closing his eyes tightly and trying to steady himself. "There's not a switch, you know, just to suddenly wrap my mind around that the man that saved me really brought all this down on me and this faceless woman that I've spent the better part of my life thinking left me out to die…" He was spiralling. He could feel it, and Liz wasn't there to help steady him. He had to find a way to stop it.

The look that Scottie Hargrave was wearing wasn't helping.

"You know what it's like to be separated from your child," she murmured after a long moment. "That terrifying moment when you realise that they're gone, followed by the all-consuming desperation to find them. You'd give anything to find them. There's no… risk too great, no sin too dark. All you know is that you need them to be safe. To be home. You remember that, don't you? Three years isn't so long."

She waited and Tom finally gave a tense nod. "I remember."

"Now imagine if you _hadn't_ gotten Agnes back. The pain doesn't dull. It only sinks deeper. It becomes a part of you, so that every breath you pull in and let loose burns because you know that you haven't done enough. You know… that you failed them on a level that a parent…. Christopher-"

"I'm not him," Tom said tightly and Scottie gave him a weak smile.

"Yes you are. Everything in here… If you want, we'll run a DNA test to confirm it, but-"

"That's not what I meant. I may have been him once, but DNA doesn't make me who I am. I might have been born your son, but you have no idea what I lived through to become the man that I am today. I've worked for you for nearly three years now. You have to know that whatever it was in Christopher Hargrave to make him Christopher Hargrave died a long time ago. I've _chosen_ to be Tom Keen out of everything I could become, and I've worked _hard_ to be the man I am right now."

Scottie shook her head. "Maybe a bit rougher, a little less trusting, but… I see him. I've seen him in you since I met you. I just didn't dare to hope, because if you're desperate enough, you'd be surprised what you can see." She sat back. "My little boy was quiet. He didn't… Well, they tried to tell me that he wasn't forming the right attachments that he should have by that age, but it's really that he only formed very specific ones. It's funny in a way, but you met Elizabeth once before you were taken. She was still Masha then and you both warmed right up to each other. It was like nothing Howard or I had seen in your reactions to strangers, even ones your own age. And now she's brought you back."

"Scottie-"

She stopped, her expression such mix of emotions that it appeared to be flickering from one to another without settling. Tom pulled in a deep breath and stood from his seat. "I'll wrap up any paperwork that you'll need for this last op so that you have everything on file."

Her jaw clenched very slightly. "Tom, I hope you're not planning on leaving Halcyon. I know this...complicates things tremendously, but you've thrived here."

"Complicated doesn't begin to cover it."

She stood, her smile forced. "Stay. Please. We will take the complications at your pace and continue on as we have for nearly three years otherwise. We've done well together, Tom. I knew we would." She paused, studying him for a moment. "If Elizabeth can work with Reddington after everything that has happened there, you and I can at least try and see where it goes."

Tom stood silently for a long moment, watching her watch him. He swallowed hard before answering. "I'll have the report to Trey by tomorrow afternoon, but then I'm taking some time off. Liz and I have a lot to discuss."

After a long moment Scottie nodded, and Tom didn't give her a chance to find a new argument as he turned. He would worry about the paperwork later. Right then, the only place he wanted to be was home.

* * *

The aftermath of a large takedown like Justin Masterson was always the worst, and Liz had to admit that Tom's flexibility in his line of work was appealing in those moments. He didn't have to go straight back to the office to file piles and piles of paperwork and to handle everything that followed the death of a perp. He had called to let her know that he was picking Agnes up and to let him know when she was on her way home so that he could start on dinner. There was something off about his voice, she knew, but he promised they could talk when she got home.

She had forgotten to call, but it was too late for dinner anyway by the time that she finally walked through their front door and tossed her keys into the bowl that his were already in. The distinct smell of Wing Yee's hit her and her stomach have a loud growl. She hoped he'd saved her some.

Liz's lips perked as she rounded the corner and into the living room. Furniture had been shifted and pillows and blankets acquisition for an admittedly impressive fort with Hudson guarding its entrance, tail thumping against the floor even if he hadn't quite found it in himself to get up and greet her. Her smile didn't fade as she dropped her bag, her jacket, kicked off her shoes, and sank to her knees at the entrance, finding her husband reclined back against a pile of pillows, his nose in a book, and their daughter sprawled out half on top of him, sound asleep.

"Hey you," he greeted as he carefully moved the book out of his line of sight, reaching at an angle to make sure he didn't wake Agnes as he set it down.

"Hey. You two have been busy."

"I promised her a fort," Tom answered and reached down when Agnes started to stir, his long fingers against her hair and she nuzzled up with her father, one arm clutching her bear, the other wrapped as far around him as she could manage.

Liz couldn't help the smile as she looked around the little hideaway. Her daddy always knew how to make Agnes feel safe, even after the traumatic last few days. "You guys eat all the fortune cookies?" she teased, spotting the empty wrappers and little slips of paper lying all around.

"If you snooze you lose with those. You know that. I was lucky to get one."

"Yeah, but you're supposed to hide one for me," she answered lightly and he finally cracked a full grin.

"I did leave you food. Does that count?"

"Close," she answered with a smile and reached for the leftovers. At this point cold Chinese was better than getting up and nuking it. She settled in a little closer to do her best not to wake their daughter. "So what did Scottie say? You sounded stressed on the phone."

"Did I?"

"Well, maybe not to anyone else, but I know your tells," she teased and wrapped a mouth full worth of noodles around her chopsticks.

Her husband smiled a little at that. "Gina gave Scottie my file."

And just like that, Liz's appetite was gone. She set the food down and caught his gaze. "Why would she- Never mind. Gina. How did that conversation go?"

Tom sighed, his fingers still playing with Agnes' dark hair. "I don't know. I'm not the kid she lost, so there's no point in her getting all worked up about it."

Liz opened her mouth to respond, but closed it again, letting her words roll around a moment before speaking carefully. "Babe, you started working for Scottie to find out more about your connection."

"And I did. It's done."

Liz winced a little at his tone and shifted, stretching out next to him on the side opposite of Agnes and she laid her head against the crook of his shoulder. He had been through a lot and she knew he was still processing what that meant, but she was seeing every sign that he was shutting down on it and locking it away. That never did him any good. Not in the long run. "And now you're running."

"I'm not running," he answered immediately. "It's just done. I've got the information I went in for. We knew this wasn't a long term job, Liz."

"Do you want to get out because you want out or because you don't want to face her?"

He paused at that and Liz felt him pull a deep breath in. "I don't know," he whispered after a moment.

"You going to fuss at me if I tell you what I think?"

Tom chuckled. "I hate it when you profile me."

"Only because I'm usually right."

He hummed a soft affirmation. "Go on."

Liz nodded, her fingers playing absently at the fabric of his shirt as she spoke. "I'm not sure you ever really let yourself fully believe that Red was telling you the truth. You've had a pretty set view of what kind of woman your mother was, so to have that upended at the same time as the rest of this is tough. It's easier to run than face the idea that someone else might care about you."

"I'm not going to be what she wants," he murmured softly.

"Are you afraid you'll disappoint her?"

"I don't know. Maybe. I'm not the same person I might have been."

Liz found herself smiling. For as well as he picked up on the emotions around him, Tom took much longer sorting through his own. She sat up carefully and leaned over, her dark hair falling around her face as she kissed him. He seemed to relax a little then and Liz's eyes fluttered open as they broke. "Just be you. She's spent the last three years working with you. She knows you're not the child she lost, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to know the man you've become. I know I'm a little biased, but I kind of like him."

Her husband snorted a laugh at that one. "Oh good. Glad to hear."

She leaned down, kissing him again. "It wouldn't hurt to let Agnes know her grandmother either. You know, at least one extended biological family member that's not trying to kidnap her."

"There were a couple of questionable moments when you were in Cuba," Tom chuckled.

"It's relative in our life," Liz murmured lightly.

"I love you, you know that?"

"I think I caught onto that at some point," she acknowledged, pulling a smile from him. Her own faded just a little, her tone turning more serious. "Tom, I'll support you in whatever you choose. Just… Don't let your fears stop you from something that could be good, please? Neither of you can rewrite the past, but you do have the decision to be in each other's lives moving forward."

"I'm going to take some time off. Just… Give us some time to think about it, you know. I thought we could take Agnes to the beach or something." He paused. "If Cooper will give you time off."

"I bet I can work something out," Liz answered and wrapped an arm around his middle. "We sleeping here tonight?"

"I'm really comfortable," Tom chuckled. "I have my two favourite people in the world."

"And getting her back to sleep would be _such_ a chore," Liz said practically.

"There is that."

She tightened her grip, letting her eyes drift closed. "I love you, Tom. No matter what, you have Agnes and me on your side."

"That's all I need," he breathed and Liz heard sleep already tugging at him. She nestled in closer and let herself relax for the first time in days, her husband's arm around her and their daughter safely snuggled in with them. For that night, if only for that night, with the storms raging around them and the threats sometimes feeling like a riptide dragging them under, that little fortress could keep the world and all of its dangers at bay. They could keep each other afloat.

It was just them, their little family, safe and together. In the end, that's what really mattered.

* * *

End.

Notes: So, I had actually planned to end the chapter with Tom walking out of Scottie's office, but by the time that I finished writing it, I felt like he needed to go home and talk to Liz about it, so you got a much longer chapter than usual for that final chapter. That, and Agnes needed her fort. I mean, c'mon. You're a professional operative that has had a rough few days, people have been trying to kill you, what do you do? You go home and make a pillow/blanket fort with your three year old daughter. Obviously.

I will (hopefully) have a new Truth in the Lies one shot up tomorrow as well.

I feel like this is turning into my announcements run... also, I'm stepping into a new realm of nerdom and fandom and am working in the beginning stages of starting up a podcast with a friend from Tumblr. It will be called Keen Minds and will focus in on the show as it relates to Tom, the Keens, and also on the spinoff. I will let you guys know more as we get closer!

Until then: Blacklist is back Thursday! Who's excited?


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